BioHazard
by Carradine
Summary: Something is wrong. Few recognize it. Among them is Odin, who can't even remember who he is. But whatever it is, it's...evil. It won't be long before the killing starts. — Rated T for Language, Violence, Gore & Some Sexual Content.
1. one

**A/N**: If you don't immediately like this, skip to chapter 5. If you want action, there's plenty for you. Skip to chapter 12, 13, 15 or 8.

Then, please let me know what you think. I'd sure love to hear it.

* * *

It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer. (please see **bottom of page**)

* * *

"Guess."

First word Odin thought of when he awoke.

**4:37 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

After that he sat up and wonde**red** how the fuck he might've fallen there – some room in some building. A **Red** Cross blood drive set-up.

"You okay?"

Three people were around him – he didn't look at the other two – she being one of them. _She _looked about 50, maybe older or younger, too-curly-for-her-face ash-blonde hair dangling in front of her eyes like a spider web on a freezing day, her withdrawn, beady black-brown eyes examining his face like there was something written on it.

"I feel kinda dizzy." First words out of Odin's mouth.

Beady-eye Lady smiled.

Somebody pulled on his arm with "Stand up NOW!" urgency. He got the urge to steal his arm – steal his arm back? – but didn't. Same thing for his right arm, but somebody else was holding that.

"Thanks," he said, to one of the two people who helped him stand. Pretty, about 22, taller than him, big, soft brown eyes looking into his like she was a Woman now, dammit, but she'd bend to his will if he imposed it upon her. Some sport team's name on the sky blue ringer she was wearing (its rings were dark blue). Brunette, a little curly – like she did that – amazingly soft-looking too, but constrained to a ponytail wastefully. It would be a little past shoulder-length if she freed it.

"You're welcome." Voice could've been more pleasant, and with lips and a subtly perfectly-shaped face like hers, he expected it to be.

Odin turned to the other person. A guy, his face a little small for his build, short spiky brown hair. Almost shorter than Odin. Eyes completely unremarkable, tight grip.

"Thanks to you too."

If Odin realized that was the second thing he said that he'd remember, and that one of the words was basically the same as the one word in his last statement, at the time, he would've said something else. Even something as unreasonable as "Fuck yourself, muffin tosser!" would've been better than a second, mirrorlike "thank you."

"No problem, buddy."

Then Odin would've regretted saying the meaner thing, but not completely. First Guy Odin Saw was not only sincere but familiar, like they knew each other.

"My memory's a little…fuzzy. Did I just pass out or something?"

As he spoke Odin felt something clawing for life on his right elbow. Medical tape, a pad on the inside.

"You just gave blood," Second, Prettier, Female said.

"And then yeah, ya passed out," First Guy said.

"I'm disappointed in myself."

Beady-eye Lady was gone, back to the blood-drawing area, but Odin didn't notice that until now. She and a few other – nurses? They were all wearing white lab coats. Supposed to indicate authority or that they're RNs? LPNs? – had a setup wherein people would lay on their backs on massage table things, give blood.

Not that that was really important. All Odin could think about was Second, Prettier Female's smile, and even First Guy's, as the two people next to him LAUGHED. They were laughing at what he said. Odin smiled, maybe because now that he was a little more familiar with Second, Prettier Girl, she was a little more beautiful.

Vibration?

In his pocket. Cellphone. Neither of the people with him seemed to notice. He'd ignore it. One vibration. Text message. Probably didn't matter. _Do I text with anybody needy?_

Maybe he did. Result:

"Thanks for helping me up, y'all. I, uh…that was really weird."

"You're welcome," First Guy said.

"Yeah," Second Female said.

"How much blood'd they take? I think I mean 'collect'."

More laughs.

"I don't know, man, I didn't give any."

Odin looked at him as if to say "Why are you here?"

Second Female took the floor, though, with "I have no idea. I got pretty dizzy on my way over here, though."

The smile meant he was supposed to laugh, but it was too late. He grinned slowly, turned it into the most-"you're funny" response he could. _God damn._

"I assume I did too," Odin said.

"Here" was a table – no, two tables – joined together with a few chairs by it for people to snack on chocolate-chip cookies and drink either some lame kind of juice or apple juice. Lame meaning that its current container was full whereas apple juice's was almost empty.

Second Female laughed.

"I gotta go help out with somethin,'" First Guy said, slapping Odin on the back lightly. "I'll see you later." He walked, heading for where the room they were in became some kind of hall.

"Yeah," Odin said. He looked to First Guy to say it but he felt Second Female behind him like she was waiting for him. Like she wanted to talk with him more.

"Don't pass out again." First Guy said.

Odin force-laughed. _That's so goddamn funny I'm going to die. Why do I like swearing so much?_

"I won't."

"Good," First Guy concluded. Disappea**red**.

Looked to Second Female.

"Did we already snack on something?"

"No," she said, with a giggle. Headed to the table.

Odin got the impression he was supposed to sit next to her by the way she walked, suggesting "Walk by me, fella." So he did.

Sit next to her, that is. When he realized she wanted him close whilst she walked, it was too late to.

"Have you given blood before?" he asked.

"Yeah. Five times, actually."

"_Five _times?" Odd inflection – like perhaps it should be "'FIVE times?'" "Five" like he's in shock, "times?" normally. Perhaps it was weird and hard-to-punctuate, but whatever Odin did, it made Second Female laugh. The only thing Odin thought when she laughed was "You're beautiful."

"Yeah, that many," she said, taking an APPLE juice packet. She grabbed a second and motioned at Odin with it. Just before he could ask what she was doing he reached out for and took it.

"Thanks," Odin said.

"Stop thanking me." Flatly, but like it kind of flatte**red** her that she could say such a thing.

Sarcastic: "Fine, I will. I'll be a jerk. I don't even care."

Second Female laughed again, just as beautifully as before. "I was kidding." Opening her apple juice packet.

"I know. I just like to pretend I'm responding unreasonably to stuff." Like he was saying something more normal. And like it was true. _Did I mean that? _Do_ I_?

"Oh, that makes sense."

"I _hope_ it does."

He took a Famous Amos cookie bag to try to avoid staring at Second Female while she laughed. The kind filled 1/3 of the way, if that, and the kind that – of that 1/3 – was only about ¾ filled with whole cookies, the rest crumbs, chocolate chips, dust, somebody's life playing out in cellophane.

"What's your poison?" he asked.

"I dunno. I have a weakness for the M&M kind."

She was looking off to his left. Odin looked off to his left. There: the only M&M cookie bag on the whole table. Was it a test, or was it genuine? _Didn't sound genuine._

"Oh no." Taking the bag, handing it to her.

"Thank you," she said, digging in.

"'tain't a problem," he said, remembering he hadn't opened his cookiebag, opening it.

"That's good," Second Female…fooded, cookie on her slickly-shiny cocaine-white teeth already. _Eats fast_. "Cuz I didn't want you to thank me again."

"That doesn't make _any _sense."

"You're right. I'm so sorry," she said. With a trace of sincerity in it. Feels bad for making fun of my showing gratitude?

Touching her shoulder. "It's okay. _This _time."

She responded well. Leaned in. A rush of warmth in Odin that he would've called "electricity" if she'd asked how it felt.

"I'm so glad," she said, her voice intermittently coming through. Between cookie-bites. In the wall.

Short silence. Odin sure as hell wanted to keep talking to her. Nothing to say, which kind of sucked. She kept glancing at him like she wanted to keep talking to him.

"What's your blood type?" Odin asked. Any conversation to tangent to any other topic they could find common ground in.

"I really don't know. I think it's O neg."

"Are you sure? It's important."

Eyes like "I know whatever you're going to say is going to be funny, so I'm gonna help as I can, but I really don't know:" "I'm not sure."

"It doesn't matter," Odin dismissed, "because I have AB negative blood."

"You have _AB negative blood_." Shock and awe.

"That's right."

"You are surely the coolest guy ever." Like if they were positioned differently she'd bow to him.

"I know." It was obvious, wasn't it? Then he had to play playing humble. He made sure to wait about a second longer than he should have. "No, wait, no. I'm pretty cool, but not that great. I haven't cu**red** many fatal diseases."

"You m—"

He interrupted. "Yet."

She just started laughing. Like she wanted to go on with the joke, but no longer could without laughing. Cookie came out her mouth and not only into the air but onto his face, onto the table, probably, and then her hand darted out. Maybe she saw some of it hit him, or just felt it coming out.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, taking a napkin from the closest napkin pile. Odin did not mean to look, but looked, at how her t-shirt didn't cover the skin between the bottom of it and her jeans, tight ones, with what looked suspiciously like a thong between her ass and him. Color of **red**, the bloody kind of **red**. Crimson wouldn't fit. _I just described it as an ass, didn't I? Is that vulgar? My cock shifted. _Second Female came back less than a second later, on the tail end of licking the napkin. Not like she was trying to excite him, showing off her dark long tongue, but businesslike.

Facing Odin. He didn't flinch, didn't react, but he definitely didn't expect her to face him for a while. Much more relevant than that, he didn't expect her to lean into him and softly wipe his mouth-area with the napkin.

"I'm really sorry. Does that make it up to you at all?"

He turned away and she treated it like a slap in the face with a small, pathetic girly whimper-gasp. "No."

"What if I licked it?"

He glanced back to her, eyes slightly open, keeping his body twisted away from her as much as possible. He raised an eyebrow. She giggled. He snapped back to his previous position. "No. Not nearly enough."

"Whatever can I do?"

Quickly, like "Why am I even talking to you?", in a snotty tone he didn't know he was capable of speaking in: "Declare me king."

"You're my king." Similar tone, but like she was an underling.

He sighed.

"Good enough. Hug me and we're friends again."

A second or two.

She giggled.

"You have to turn back first. My king."

"Do I?"

She laughed.

"Yes."

"Common mistake."

He turned. He probably could have prolonged the turn further, but he didn't have any idea how he could've done it in a manner as funny as his ending note, so, "common mistake" and the turn.

Second Female hugged O

_that felt suspiciously like a kiss_

"Are we friends again, my king?" she asked.

A sigh. Partially just to make his heart beat slow down. "Okay."

"Can I finish my cookies now?"

"You don't really have to eat, do you?" Their first breaking-character moment since they started. He felt like he was supposed to be the first there, being the king and all.

"I do."

He made a noise that sounded a little like "but!" and

"I do, my king."

"That's right." Firmly, folding his arms over his chest and acting like he was taller than her.

Odin saw First Guy walking around by the blood-drawing tables. **red** Not until now did Odin notice he was pigeon-toed. Do not come over here. _If you fuck this up for me…_

"Thank you," she said, sipping on her orange juice.

"Whatever."

Obviously, he was too cool to accept anybody's fucking apologies.

**4:43 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

She had to finish sometime, didn't she? Not that Odin didn't.

Their talking had dropped off a little. They wanted to talk more. He wasn't sure what to say, she wouldn't tell him what she wanted him to ask, he couldn't tell what she wanted him to ask anyway.

"Do you have class after this?"

He didn't realize what he was saying until he got to "after," but by then it was entirely too late to stop. It was too late to stop once the "D" started coming out, because if he stopped then, she'd know he almost said it, look at him and then he would blush and explode and die feeling stupid that she looked at him when he probably had cookie on his teeth. He almost tripped on the "this" but got through it fine.

"No, I don't," she said. It wasn't _very_ obviously some kind of door-open invitation. "I finished at like 3 o'clock, but I said I was gonna go to this, so I just studied in the library for like an hour and a half."

"Do you have a test tomorrow or something?"

She giggled, and he wasn't sure why. He might never be. "No, I don't."

That was a hint, wasn't it?

"Cool. I don't either, and we've just _got_ to see _Grindhouse_ together." _How'd I know about that?_

"What's that?"

She knew. She definitely knew.

"Before I answer it directly, do you know who Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez are?"

"No. Did that Tarantino guy make _Hostel_?"

"Good question, but no, he didn't. He executive-produced. The guy who made _Hostel_'s named Eli Roth. He also directed _Cabin Fever_. He has a cameo in _Grindhouse_, coincidentally."

He couldn't tell how forced her surprise-giggle was but it wasn't genuine. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Tarantino's kinda friends with him. He also directed a fake ad in _Grindhouse_." _Where's this shit coming from?_

"Okay: What is _Grindhouse_?"

"It's a double-feature those two guys I asked you about directed. Quentin Tarantino made _Death Proof_."

"Double feature like…what?"

"I'm not real sure. They're both supposed to be like 85 minutes long."

"How long is it, three hours?"

"That's what I heard, but I don't know."

A "Hmm." Then she asked, "What's _Death Proof_ about?"

She's about as fast as Odin. So fast that when he thought about that, he left an awkward silence. "It's a slasher movie, but the weapon's a car."

"And it'd normally be, like, a knife?"

"Good guess."

A nice laugh. Not that real, but still pretty nice to hear, nice to see that smile.

"The other movie's called _Planet Terror_. It's about zombies."

"Not _zombies_!"

"Yes! Zombies!"

She laughed. He wanted to think it was at his inflection, but by the way she looked at him, it was his crazy-eyes expression. He tried to sound like the guy in a disaster movie who warns everybody about what, specifically, The Bad Guy is – a twister, global warming – once it's clearly established that _something_ is The Bad Guy. A real laugh, too. _You're beautiful. You make me want to believe in God._

"I'm so horrified! You're gonna have to come, cuz I'm gonna need my king to hold me."

"Don't worry. I'll be there." With a touch of gruff action hero in his voice she smiled at.

"Awesome."

He remembe**red**: That last cookie…that last part-cookie – was going to taste really great, because he'd forgotten about his cookie bag for the last minute or two.

It tasted really good, but not great. He might've just distorted that memory, though, because as he bit in, he almost didn't hear Second, Prettier, Girl saying, "I was gonna go see _The Hills Have Eyes 2 _with some friends'a mine. Do you wanna go?"

"Sure." He tried to shrug it off like "I don't care whether I see more of and/or make out with you today or ever" and it came out okay. She hadn't entirely hidden how she felt about him so maybe it was okay. Or maybe she just saw the weak point in his armor. _Fuck_. "When are you gonna see it?"

How many text messages have I gotten since I started talking with her?

"I dunno, like, now." She didn't react, but he was going to react his way anyway. His way was to display SHOCK on his face as if he should've said "You're seeing it _when_?!" At that, Second Female laughed, a lot harder than he expected her to. Real laughter, again. "No, we're gonna see it at like six. We don't have anything to do today. Is that okay?"

"Yeah." He wanted to suggest that either he knew exactly what he had to do or he was going to blow off whatever he had to do, with "for her" strongly _not_ implied at the end.

**4:52 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

Not outside. It was a little cold there. Instead, they were heading through the math building – parallel the mostly commonly-used parking lot – to then, later, head outside.

"Do you have a car?" Second Female asked.

He checked his pockets pretty sure he did. He almost said yes, but then it occur**red** to him that he didn't know. Then he almost said yes anyway, like he'd say it, then dive his hands into his pockets.

Didn't entirely matter. Second Female started laughing anyway, after a second or two of his search.

Keys in fingers. His hand came out. He had a few keys, one of them to something Honda, a new one. "Yes," Odin said, "but I thought I had a Ford."

She laughed more. "Why would you want Ford? Ugh."

"I don't know! Why wouldn't I? I don't know anything about Ford."

She waited two seconds longer than she needed to, then she kind-of blushed.

"I don't know." She let the laughter out, and although he didn't think the admission was that funny, Odin laughed too. "I just hear people say that a lot."

"Jeez. You shoulda seen the last place I lived."

Where the hell did that come from? Where was the last place he lived? Odin wouldn't be able to name it, that's for sure.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, it was…a warzone. Ford was kind of a white flag, but a white flag to get shot."

She laughed. "You're a really funny guy."

"Thank you. I think you're a really funny gal, too." He wanted strongly to call her by her name. He did not know her name.

He looked at Second, Prettier, Female, projecting that.

"I don't know your name!" she ejaculated, kind of pointing at him like she was accusing him of something.

"I don't know yours either."

"I was just gonna ask that! I was so sure you told me, but I was thinking about it–"

"And I didn't!"

"I know, right?" she said, then held her hand out. "My name's Molly."

He shook her hand.

"That's a beautiful name."

"Thank you."

She was about to say something but he stepped in. "My name's Odin. I wasn't stalling." He had to speak a little more quickly than normal so she wouldn't accuse him of stalling or react, which her eyes told him she was going to do.

"Good!" she said, in a completely silly, eyes-wide-open-as-part-of-this-massive-grin way.

"That's exactly what I was gonna say!" Odin said. Both of them laughing.

"Can we hug again? I know we shook hands, but I won't get any closure if we don't."

"Sure."

He went in first. About 60 percent. _I shouldn't think of hugging that way, should I? What the fuck?!_

She didn't seem like she'd let go anytime soon. Something about that made Odin nervous and he made motions to let go first. He almost patted her back at first, uncomfortable then, too, but held back. She probably felt him almost-pat her back. She didn't pat his.

"Great," she said, having accomplished whatever.

A trashcan was up ahead, as Odin saw. They went by it. As they did, he threw his wallet into it. He didn't even know what it looked like before then. It was big, brown and said "BAD ASS MOTHERFUCKER," in two lines, with "MOTHERFUCKER" in much smaller print than "BAD" and "ASS" were in. Odin giggled. _I should want a wallet that funny _back_, shouldn't I?_

But he didn't.

"Did you just throw your wallet away?"

"I think so." He replaced that with yes, not wanting to say "yes," and not uncertain.\

She laughed. "Did you keep your money?"

_I can use it._

"Yes," he said.

A second. He sta**red** straight into Molly's eyes and she sta**red** straight back into his.

He shoved his hands into his pockets.

She laughed, hard, looking away, putting her hand over her mouth. That Odin didn't understand, but he got the feeling he'd do it too.

Money. A card. He checked that – driver's license. He's 18. _And I look like that?...I guess this sounds like a guy-looking-into-mirrors-a-lot-to-reaffirm-something-untrue thing, but I'm not ugly. I'm kinda good-lookin'. Maybe I'm not that funny. Of course I'm not. That's how it works._

"Yeah," he said. "I kept my ID too."

"Lemme see." Reaching her hand out. Knowing he'd do it.

"Are you gonna give it back?"

"Yes, I am."

He handed it to her.

She took it in both hands and held it close to her eyes. He wanted to be that close to her. Feel her lips against his.

"Awww!" Empathetic noise. "Lookit how cute you are!"

"Thanks."

"Your name really _is _Odin! I thought you were being melodramatic or something."

"I wasn't."

She studied it more. He felt silly not doing anything.

He asked, "What's my last name?"

"Don't you know?"

"Nope."

She laughed. Odin felt awesome for getting to be so funny being so honest. He didn't even have a vague guess, a "ends with –son."

"Odin, your last name is Strong."

"You're kidding."

Molly sta**red** at him seriously for a second. And then broke down – "I am" – laughing. "Your last name's Owen. It'd sound good with 'Molly' in front of it."

"That's not funny."

She handed him the card. Her fingers touched one of his a little and he liked it, but he igno**red** that.

As Odin's license said, "ODIN SHAUN OWEN."

"That's _not_ funny."

Molly laughed.

"My parents are ridiculous. Why would anybody's name be so repetitive?"

"How would I know?" Opening her arms to say she didn't know.

"That's what _I _was gonna say!"

They laughed more.

"Lemme see yours, Molly."

_She just said "Owen" would sound good after "Molly." Her name's Molly. "Molly Owen." She was suggesting "Molly Owen." Marriage. Why'd I break it d – This girl's crazy!_

_And I like it._

She reached into her purse, reached into a smaller pink changepurse. Two seconds later:

MOLLY SARA HARPER

"No jokes, okay? I know I don't talk that fast or that much."

"I wasn't gonna say anything about 'Harper.'"

"…What were you gonna say?"

"Nope. Now you don't get to know."

"But Odin!..." said Molly, like he was her brother or a relative or a teacher or her dad, like she could just as easily have said, "But Dad!...", which was probably bad for Odin. _Should I grab her tits now or something?_

"Shut up, woman. I do whatever I want."

"You're like a Viking warrior, aren't you?" Like it excited her. Body language: While they were indeed walking, she vee**red** closer to him. She'd been getting closer anyway.

"Before I answer that, in the interest of full disclosure, I don't remember what the name Odin might be from or in reference to." She giggled. "To answer your question…yes. I pillage shit as I please."

_Maybe I shouldn't have sworn._

She laughed.

Fuck that, nevermind.

"I think you're gonna like _Hills Have Eyes_. It looks like there's gonna be lotsa violence in it."

"I hope there will be. I'm getting' my bloodlust just _thinking_ about pillagin'."

_God damn. That better not be too forward._

"Oh my. I'd better help contain you. I don't wanna get in any legal trouble today!" Like some hopeless woman fighting King Kong, as Kong climbed a building in mid-1920s New York City. Odin didn't know why he thought of it being in the 1920s, but he did know he had a mental image of a flopper who looked pretty hot.

"Today?" Odin asked. It was the only response he could think of.

Defensively, Molly said, "Yeah, today. What of it?"

"Nothin'. But to establish this, if there's something I want outta you, I'm gonna get it."

"Are you? By force if necessary?"

"You bet your ass I am."

"Maybe I will."

Grins.

**4:58 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

"Oh my GOD it's cold! Carry me!"

"Okay!"

It took way too long to find her Sunfire, but they definitely found it. Her black in a crowd of white, green and other light colors was easy to spot once they got out far enough. Once Odin did, that is – Molly rested comfortably in his arms the entire time. They bounced around plenty – he jogged whenever he could, telling himself that he wasn't doing it to show off for the pretty girl carried The Classic Way in his arms – but she enjoyed the ride, and a few times, looked like she kind of wanted him to kiss her, or like she wanted to lean forward somehow and kiss him.

Molly announced, "We're here."

"You're sure. If I set you down I might not be able to pick you up again."

"My king, I would never lie to you."

He put her down. "That's good." He stood up.

She said "Aww" in disappointment.

"What?" he asked.

"I thought you were gonna grab my ass."

"I should have?"

"Yep."

They were facing each other now. Maybe it would be too much. Maybe it wouldn't be. He grabbed both cheeks and pulled her into him slowly, one half-step at a time. He arced an eyebrow as if to ask if what he was doing was okay with her. She was a little surprised, but not to the point at which she'd say "I didn't mean grab _that _much of it!" She looked like she kind of liked it.

He familiarized himself with the contours of her ass. It wasn't the kind that, if he saw it walking away from him in a hallway, he'd stare at until it disappea**red**, but he'd enjoy glancing at it. He might glance twice. He'd love to touch it during any one of those glances, too.

After a second or two – this on the driver's side of her black Sunfire – of his ass-feeling, she went in, like to kiss him. He suspected foul play, went in about 10 percent.

Good thing, too. She only went about 80 percent, then arced backward, let her lips graze his. Hardly. His lips tingled, but that was somewhat okay because he knew hers did too. It was then that he noticed her breasts squishing into him. Her shirt was so loose he never thought of them, but she definitely had a pair. "C" jumped out at him, so out-of-context and disconnected from what he was thinking about, what it meant wouldn't occur to him for some time.

"I was just gonna hang out with my friends for a little while. Do you wanna come?"

"Okay. Should I meet you…wherever you're going?"

"No. I want you with me." A little too serious, leaving her a little too vulnerable. "I can't feel safe without mine king." As if that would dial it back.

"Good. I'm totally into protecting my subjects." Odin started walking for the passenger's side. He kind of wished he went the front way so he could slide over some of the hood. "Who I am much cooler than."

"I know, honey," she said, unlocking the doors. The click was a lot more reassuring than he thought it would be.

--

**bottom of page **Please see p. 122 – **The Editors**


	2. two

**5:05 ****pm ****Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

"I've seen a couple'a your movies," Molly said. She glanced to Odin, but she was mostly driving. Given she was a college student, in terms of social acceptability, her car probably could've been a lot messier, but it was still far from clean.

"Yeah?" _What am I, a filmmaker? Media major? Or do I just like it?_

"Yeah," she said. "My favorite's the…" She laughed. "The action one."

Odin didn't even have to think (although that wouldn't've done any good). "_Migraine_?" just came out, like the _Grindhouse_ stuff.

"Yeah!" She glanced between him and the road like she was trying to remember something, then, lightbulb: "I liked the action a lot, but what I really got into was the romance stuff. Nice sex scene, by the way."

He almost blushed, grinning. Well, maybe he blushed, but when Molly looked at him, her reaction didn't say "you blushed." Odin said, "Most people don't really like that. Then again I normally only hear from guys."

"Girls are too shy to say anything to you?"

"Yeah. Cuz I'm so imposing."

He looked a lot shorter than her, the way she was sitting straight and he was sitting with a slouch.

She laughed. "Something about you really is kinda intimidating."

"What is it?" Odin found it hard to believe that, although she sounded like she completely meant what she said.

"I dunno. You have kind of an intense…gaze. You don't really look away the way most people do."

"Interesting you should say that. I remember thinking about it today." _Do I?_ "Like…I was on my way to the library earlier, in the walkway – the skinny one? Where if you walk sloppily you could bump into somebody going the other way?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, as you well know, it's hard not to notice people coming or going in that. I don't always look at people going the opposite way as me, but I never look down. Most of the people I passed by on my way into the library, I don't know what to do, either completely avoided looking at me, but I know they did cuz you can always see the eye-flick, or they looked down." _How did I just _know_ that?_

"I usually kinda look around. But I know what you mean."

"Yeesh. Yeah." Odin loved the way she smiled at him, then looked back at the road. Her lips looked awesome. And they were. "It's like…by not meeting my gaze, they're submitting, but…to what? To the shortish hot guy?"

"Maybe so."

"It's just silly. I get the sense that maybe it's human nature, or maybe it's not, but…if it's some societal thing, like, in The Olden Days, whatever they were, if looking straight into somebody's eyes meant it was a challenge, wouldn't we've dropped that? It's kind of understood that you're not supposed to penetrate anybody's aura, but a look? I don't get it."

"I don't either, but…I think maybe it's just cuz I'm appreciating how hot you are."

"Thank you, Molly."

"Not a problem."

**5:36 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

"Do you wanna, like, watch a movie or something?" Molly asked, setting things down in places like she'd done it daily for most of her time at Biskind. She lived in an apartment with a friend named Polly, who was not there. The place looked very much poor-college-students-with-no-time-to-paintesque, with kind of an off-the-line off-white paintjob on the walls, a white kitchen with a white and green faux-marble floor and a really cool wooden-topped island, a crappy but soft enough beaten-down splotchy gray-white carpet, like to conceal hairs, dirt, dust and most small pieces of anything else that fell onto it. There was a poster about 10 feet in, on the left wall before it turned into an outcove with entry to both bedrooms, featuring some very high-ceilinged ancient Egyptian interior scene with maybe 10 explorers wandering about, pointing at things. Odin kind of wanted to be wherever those people were.

"Sounds great."

"Good," Molly said, setting her keys and purse down in an island table in the apartment. The kitchen was immediately to the right of the entrance, and the table was in that. Odin felt very uncomfortably like a voyeur, in the little entrance hallway, watching her, but her body language said she was coming right out. Being busy untying his fancy, a-little-too-worn-in brown Mexico '66s helped a little, but…come on. "There's nothin' to do around here."

_Implying we can't make out for awhile, or that we should?_

"What's our selection like?" Odin asked.

Molly moved into the living room, just outside the kitchen. To the left were two bedrooms. Past the living room was a patio large enough to sunbathe on, with walls high enough for people in the patios not to be spied upon. Not easily, anyway. Molly looked strange carrying her backpack into the living room and setting it down as Odin followed, slowly, taking in all he could and waiting for her to suggest what he was free to do.

"Not bad. We have a lotta poppy stuff, but a lot of it's good. Then we have some of our individual taste stuff. I hate romantic comedies – like, Adam Sandler stuff. I like _Happy Gilmore _a lot, but after that I got ti**red** of it."

"I think I know what you mean. And _Click _was just awful." His phone vibrated as he spoke. That's three.

"Yeah, it was," Molly said, in complete agreement, with relief, like he was the first person to agree.

"I'm kind of a closet-Christopher Walken fan, but he didn't save it for me. I liked that he kinda reprised his role from that prophecy movie, but…I threw up when I saw that."

"How'd you see it?" Molly asked, standing a few feet in front of him, like she either wanted to go sit on the couch behind her or like she wanted him to move closer to her.

He fidgeted with his phone like he'd been too spaced-out to move closer, which was kind of true anyway, then moved closer to Molly, saying, "At the budget place in Courtland. It cost like $2."

"Still too much?"

"Yes." He felt that was about close enough. Few feet.

She giggled nervously. "Do you wanna sit down? I'll pick what to watch, or you can, and I won't make you try to guess how close to me to sit."

"Sounds good." He couldn't thank her, but he could try to include that in his tone, so he did.

She smiled, one of those heartfelt kinds. Why did her lips have to be so appealing? "Great. Sit wherever you want." She gestu**red** like she knew he didn't need her to, but like she was that nervous.

"I will." She started moving for the TV, he started moving for the couch. "I'm also gonna turn my phone off. If you hear a flip, it's not me texting somebody."

She looked back just to smile at him, locks of her hair hanging over her face. He wanted to kiss her right then. That would be too fast, wouldn't it? _What kinda girl is Molly, anyway? _Odin wonde**red**.

**5 New Messages.**

**Exit – Read**

He chose to exit.

"Oh! Hang on. Don't turn your phone off. I need your number," Molly said.

She dashed to her backpack. Although he kind of liked it, Odin felt guilty for watching her breasts bounce on the journey.

**5:38 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

"Thanks," he said, selecting "store."

"How do I look?" asked Molly.

He studied it – the sharp-looking, 640x480 pixel JPEG, shrunken to display on his phone's LCD screen, saying, "Hang on a second. Sometimes they look perfect in the preview thing, but when I check 'em later they're all blurry." _Really?...The hell…?_

Molly put her hand on his thigh. Midway, on the top.

"How many seconds do I hafta hang on for?" She acted eager. Odin couldn't tell how much of an act that was versus how much of an excuse it was for her to touch him.

He thought about that, cycling between phone-menus. "As long as you want." _Should I tell her to pull me out?_

She giggled. Rubbed with her thumb. Her other hand was on her thigh, and she was was wiping sweat off her palm. It seemed like that, and the hand on his thigh was about that warm, and his hands were nearly sweating too. Whatever that said about how they felt about each other, Odin didn't want to know. _It does not take this short an amount of time._

She said "Fair enough."

Seconds later Odin was sure the picture turned out great. Normally, it would've taken longer, but he focused on the phonework as much as he could so he wouldn't enjoy what she was doing too much.

"Done," he said.

Her hand left him.

"How do I look?" Molly asked, sitting up.

He shifted his gaze from his phone's display screen to her, straight into her eyes. "Beautiful." He was afraid that would come out like he was just complimenting her, in some shallow way. It didn't come out in some shallow way.

She smiled. The way she did it said she wanted to say something in response, but something about the way he said "beautiful" threw her off, made her forget or throw out her plan.

"Wanna see it?" he asked.

"Sure." Glad for the out he offe**red**.

He moved his phone-hand toward her with the intent to show her. She could let him do it alone or she –

Yep.

She put both her hands on his and guided him in from the halfway point in his motion.

Another huge smile. One he'd earned. For all the time he'd known her nobody else had made her smile that way. Not that he'd seen any of her friends. _Fuck, she doesn't have a boyfriend or something, does she? I want that._

"Have you seen my Facebook or anything?"

"No."

"I have some pictures of me there, and…I don't look this good in any of them. How'd you do that?"

"I'm just good."

"You _are_, Odin. What can I say." He realized her tone was noticeably softer now than it had been anywhere else. Maybe it was a comfort zone thing.

A silence for a few seconds. He thought she was going to do something. Maybe she was waiting for him to tell her he was giving her an opening. Odin said, "You could thank me."

She smiled. "I will. Come here."

He did, but, a little nervous about whatever she was going to do, got silly about it. Stuck his cheek out toward her, getting his face pretty close.

She put her hands on his face gingerly, one of them partially on his lips, pulled him in and slapped a big smooch on his cheek. It was wet and loud and great.

He came away smiling. "You're welcome." _FUCK! I should've kissed her. She's not gonna wanna kiss again._

They sta**red** into each other. He couldn't tell how she felt about it, but he felt like she was looking inside of him. Like somehow his pupils opened and linked them spiritually, and that in a certain ethereally beautiful alternate dimension, their spirits compa**red** notes. "You liked _Zoolander_? Fuck, I did too. The funny stuff, at least. 'You've done NOTHING!'" "I didn't know anybody else had simultaneously soft _and_ dry skin!" "Nobody likes speed limits." And things deeper that words not only couldn't describe but that words couldn't even hint at. Odin felt Molly's heart beating…unless it was just that loud.

"Want me to pick out a movie?" came out of nowhere, but from Molly, with a nervous taint. Odin was getting a little nervous too. He liked feeling that, but it was also scary, like maybe something would split them up tonight and they'd never have it again…so why get used to it?

"Sure!" Odin said. She got up, sticking her ass – her perfectly-rounded, perfectly-highlighted-by-those-jeans ass – in his face, and not only that, but she side-stepped in front of him to get around the coffee table between them and the entertainment center. It was completely unnecessary because the path without him in the way was a lot shorter than that one. "Did you have anything in mind?"

"Nope," she said, her backside pointed his way like she was aiming it. Light from outside falling on and bouncing off of her made her not only look angelic, but angelic and _hot_. He wanted to compliment her on that, badly. "You?"

"Similarly, nope. I'm so sorry." He turned his phone off, now that he remembe**red** to. "I just turned my phone off."

"Are you sure you didn't text anybody?"

"Yes. Pretty much. No. Yes. Kind of."

She turned around and looked at him. An accusation. As soon as he was in her peripheral vision he tossed his phone to the side, looked around innocently. "Oh hey," he said, because he'd just noticed that she was watching him and everything. "I didn't notice that you were looking or anything a couple seconds ago."

"Odin, you're insane."

"Am I Odin, or am I your king?"

"Can't you be both?"

"Not to you."

She smiled. He didn't really know if that meant something, and she didn't either, but she liked it. He grinned to try to say what he felt about it. Maybe that's what her smile meant too.

"Okay. My king, you're insane."

"Duly noted." He clapped like he was ordering something. "To work, Miss Molly."

"Call me Miss Owen."

"Are you sure? It sounds less silly than 'Miss Molly'."

That look. He wasn't particularly close to her and thus couldn't appreciate the look as much as it deserved to be appreciated, but he could still feel it. With a warm voice, she said, "I'm sure."

He waited a second to savour The Look, then: "Miss Owen, get back to work."

"I'm sorry, my king!" And all the while, quietly urging her curvy body at him when she could. She was good at it – not once did it actually look deliberate, until – _Whoop_, thought Odin, grinning when she bent over, way too slowly. During:

"I'm an important man."

"Ah! I'm so sorry!"

"Faster!" He made a bullwhip sound.

She arced her back. "Ah no!"

"Yes! _The whip_!"

She pretended she was in an adrenaline-fuelled state of fear, unnecessarily dropping and fumbling with DVD cases, saying, "Not the whip! Never again!"

"Just pick a movie! I don't want to hurt you!"

She looked back at him. "You don't?"

"…No, I do, I was just…I was just…trying to…" With shifty, submissive eyes. Then he snapped them back to hers. "Stop stalling!" He raised his arm.

"Oh no!"

She grabbed a DVD case like she'd known all along she'd pick that one, but wanted to have fun with the kingthing for awhile.

**5:44 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

Sitting very close to Odin, Molly kind of wiggled her ass into the couch. It was the kind of couch that, while not too soft, could hold maybe five or six people in it pretty comfortably. It was also huge, and Odin was afear'd Molly wouldn't sit next to him. When she did, so close their thighs touched, it suddenly became much easier to breathe.

"I hate DVD ads and stuff," she said. "Is it okay with you if I skip 'em?"

"Instead of answering directly, I'm going to let you in on a secret. If that doesn't work, gladly, I'll answer your question to the extent of my ability to. Okay?"

"Sounds great."

"The hint is this: I _also _hate DVD ad stuff."

She smiled. "I am so happy I could _kiss _you!"

She pressed the DVD player remote's skip button. "And…and you're just not gonna do it like that?" Odin asked. He wasn't done but Molly looked to him, as he spoke, like she was going to interrupt. "Miss Owen, you are cold as ice!"

She laughed, and looked at him like she wanted to rip his shirt off. Then back to the TV.

_It's too big a risk. Go for her off-hand first._

_Fuck that. I've lost less than two hours to this girl, and I really like her. If she really likes me, if it's too far, she'll just tell me._

Odin put his arm around Molly's waist. It was slimmer than he thought it'd be. Her t-shirt was pretty loose – tight enough to make stretched-out lines between her breasts, but it was more or less a tube, and it didn't close enough around her hips and waist to show their approximate dimensions, so his expectations were ones he'd extracted, and they were wrong. His guess aside, it was glorious.

Not to mention that she responded positively.

Odin had about half a second to appreciate how nice her waist and hips felt in his arm before Molly leaned INTO him. They fit perfectly; odd considering she was taller than him. Her hair ticked his neck, made him grin, and Odin hoped that didn't feel weird to Molly – the girl with her head in the spot from his shoulder to his neck.

Her arm started moving behind him like she wanted to place it somewhere. He let go of her to give her space. She put her arm around his waist, and now his arm wouldn't fit around hers. So it went to her shoulder, around her back. That felt better. They fit better.

She skipped more ads. She kept pressing the menu button, which kept not doing them any good.

"I really hate DVD ads," Odin said. Molly laughed, he assumed at what he said. Odin wanted her to laugh at how he said it, because somehow, something John Hammond said in _Jurass_**RED**_ic Park_ – Steven Spielberg's film adaptation – jumped into his mind, and he impersonated Hammond's actor, Richard Attenborough, as best he could when he spoke.

"Me too, darling."

_She sure enjoyed that._

Odin giggled.

After a second, Odin thought of something: "We're not gonna horror-out, are we?"

"What do you mean?" Molly said, reaching under his shirt and scratching at his back.

"I haven't seen it, so I may be…_quite_ wrong, but…_Texas Chainsaw Massacre_'s the same kinda movie _Hills Have Eyes_ is, right? I mean the remakes. I haven't seen the original _Chainsaw Massacre_."

Molly looked up at him, twisting around oddly. Not oddly. Odin just hadn't been that close to anybody in awhile. It felt good, but unfamiliar. "I don't think it's possible to horror out."

"Good." She smiled. Odin continued, "I don't think it is either, but I wasn't thinkin' for me."

She ponde**red** that. _Why do I talk funny?_

Molly grinned. "You're so sweet!" She kissed the bottom of his chin. Another wet detach-smack, another time Odin loved being alive.

"I'm glad I'm so sweet," he said.

"Me too," she said, back in her old position, not looking at him, but still very close.

**5:57 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

"I don't know your roommate at all. Is she gonna be okay with me here?"

"You're fucking right she is," Molly replied, still seeming fond of Odin's holding her, still seeming fond of givin' his back some lovin' with her nails. They were short, but long enough to scratch something. "And if she's not I'll crush her."

"Miss Owen, are you a fan of _Borat_?"

"My king, I am a fan of _Borat_."

"When's the first time you saw it? Or any _Ali G Show_ stuff."

"I never saw that. I would always see, like, a snippet, but I never paid attention."

"Did you have HBO in here or something?"

"No. Guys would have the DVD and stuff like that, they'd be watching it when we hung out, but I'd be talking or something." She got a little hesitant when she said "guys," like she wanted to, but wouldn't, say "I've had plenty of boyfriends before, but I'm _yours _now. I promise."

"Ah so, that's why."

"What?"

"I just wanted to use the expression." He grinned, then, in kind of a crazy high-pitchedish Southerner voice, "Don't pay it no mind."

Molly laughed.

"Is there anything I need to know about your roommate? I feel like she's gonna come in, see me and get mad or interrogate me or something."

"Don't worry about it." She patted his chest goofily, but a little more softly than she needed to. Odin assumed he was not supposed to react, so he did his best "indifferent" impression.

He saw his phone receiving another message. He'd lost track, and forgotten that he put it on silent mode as opposed to…off-mode, but he wasn't about to shrug the image of femininity off him to turn a fucking cellphone off. No matter how much cooler RAZRs were than all other cellphones. Well, it wasn't that bad an idea.

"Odin."

For his attention. He looked at her.

"You with me?" She put her hand on his face.

"Yeah."

"You looked kinda spaced-out. Are you okay?" asked Molly.

He thought about it. "I'm great."

"No you're not." She sat up, looked straight at him. She held his face with both hands. "What is it?"

"I don't know. Something feels off."

"Can I do anything for you?"

That snapped him out of it somehow, but instead of letting her see that in his eyes, he snap-looked down to her breasts. A second. Two.

Odin looked back up to Molly. "What?"

She laughed.

She kissed him on the lips. Another smooch, but he felt the wet part this time. He responded as he could.

"I'm glad I helped," she said, like she felt like kind of a tool. She let go of his face.

"You know I was kidding, right?"

"Yeah."

He put his hand on her face. "I like you," Odin said. "I'm not one'a those guys who's into breasts or asses or legs or anything." He tried to switch his voice into melodramatic/grizzled warrior mode, like he was doing a film trailer voiceover: "Got it?"

She smiled. "I got it."

**9:46 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

"I always get plenty'a patients and shit like that, right? But there were a whole fuckin' lot today. I mean, there's a whole lot, and there's a whole _fuckin_ lot, and this was a whole fuckin' lot."

"Where do you work? A hospital?" Odin asked.

"Yeah." Speaking: Molly's friend Darryl Waddell. Molly's roommate, Pollyanna Oakley, was also in the gang, but she was a little quieter, maybe self-conscious because of the only guy present. She took a bite of her macaroni & cheese. A big one.

Everybody waited for Darryl to inhale a little. Polly looked like she couldn't care less whether she said anything. Molly looked like she wanted to apologize to Odin for making him be with her friends. Odin just wanted to learn as much as he could about whatever he could, be friends with Molly's friends, and at the top of the list, not be bo**red** and uncomfortable.

"Why were there so many people there?" Odin asked.

"You got me. I know there've been complaints of dog attacks 'n' shit lately, but, it's like, how could dogs – a few or many of them, even – take out that many people? I didn't keep track but we must'a had like 200 fuckin' people there tonight. We normally get plenty, like over 100, but past the 200 point it's a noticeably larger influx."

"That's what _I_ was gonna say!" Odin said. "You got any guess? I'm guessin'…'Not really'."

"Yeah," Darryl said. Sip of her drink. "It's gonna bug me for months, though, unless we should happen to fall on the answer."

"You could just say 'It's the al-Qaeda!' and get the FBI to do all your work."

Laughs from everybody at the table. It wasn't that funny. Darryl giggled earnestly, but Polly kind of forced it out, like to tell Odin it was okay to ask her stuff, and Molly was just radiating Guilty.

"Guess so," Darryl said.

"You got any guesses?" Odin asked Molly. Under the table they were holding hands. Occasionally, Molly'd eat a French fry or something like that, or Odin would take a drink from his large water glass, but Darryl was basically the only person eating.

"None. I guess it could always be Martians doing things unspeakable."

"She's got it," Odin said, looking from her to Darryl. He looked to Polly, too, saying "She figu**red** it out." They were in a booth at a '50s-style diner in the kind of large square space not associated commonly with '50s diners, but the decoration was pretty '50s. And the hamburgers seemed appropriately old.

"I'm glad," Polly said.

Another goddamn silence.

"Does anybody mind if I tell a story?" Odin asked.

"Not at all," Molly said.

Odin looked to Polly and Darryl.

Darryl shrug/gestu**red** "go ahead" and Polly said "I'd love to hear one."

"Good," Odin said. "Now, two stories come to mind. I'd like to tell the longer one, but if anybody gets ti**red** of it, let me know. Switching without transition to the second will be no challenge." He looked to everybody. "Is that clear?"

"We're all gonna like it," Polly said, like, "_Of course_."

"I can pretty much promise that," Molly said.

Darryl began, "I–"

Odin cut her off: "I don't care."

She laughed. Throughout the night he'd established he ca**red** about everything everybody had to say, very clearly.

"I call this 'Clever Student.'

"Now, as far as I know, this is a question from a University of Washington test. The question is this, and it's a bonus question: 'Is Hell exothermic,' meaning it gives off heat, or 'is it endothermic,' meaning, Does it absorb heat?

"Most of that professor's students wrote proofs using Boyle's Law, which has it that gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed, or something like that. Now, the reason this story came to me, is that one student wrote what I'm going to share with you three.

"'First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time,' wrote the student. Because of that, we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving it. I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, we'll look at the world's current religions. Most of them state that if you are _not _a member of their religion, you will go to _Hell_. Since there are more than one of these religions, and since people do _not _belong to more than one religion, we can project that _all _souls go to Hell.

"'With our birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

"'Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell, because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to _expand_ proportionately, as souls are added. This gives us two possibilities:

"'1: If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls _enter _Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

"'2: If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

"'So which is it?"

Odin made relatively clear that he wasn't done speaking, which was good because even with that Polly made motions to answer.

He took a long swig of water. This was a lie; he wanted to know how the story was going over. Molly and Polly were positively into it, and Darryl had been looking away from him to eat much less often than she had in any flashfight-conversation they'd had previously in the restaurant. He could –

"To continue: 'If we accept the postulate given to me by Nicole during my freshman year that "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her _last night_, then Possibility Number Two must be true, and thus, I am _sure _that Hell is exothermic, and has indeed _already _frozen over.

"'The corollary of this theory is that _since_ Hell is frozen over, it follows that it is _not _accepting any more souls and is therefore extinct...leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a diving being, which explains why, last night, Nicole kept shouting "Oh my God."'"

An eruption of laughter, even from people around them Odin had not noticed watching him. At the reactions of those people, he flinched.

**10:32 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

"Are you _sure _you had to do all the push-ups and stuff?" Molly asked.

"Yeah," he said, obsessive-compulsively checking the foot of Molly's bed to make sure the big yellow "Play Golf!" shirt she was loaning him was still there. "Is it okay if I go wash my face?"

"But I'll miss you."

"Baby, I'll miss you too."

Didn't take long.

Molly said, "I missed you so much, sweetie! Jump in next to me!"

"How literally do you mean that?" Odin asked.

"Don't jump really hard or anything, but…pretty literally."

He leaned back a little to get more out of his jump, then went for it. He chickened out at the end and jumped with much less force than he originally meant to jump with.

Odin skidded, but landed pretty well, just short of Molly's face. He bumped into her pleasantly.

"Nice jump, honey," she said, waiting for him to crawl up to her a little. When he did – which took about two seconds – she rolled from her back to her side and threw her outside leg over his inside leg. Him being on his chest.

"Thank you."

She held his chin and kissed him softly, and kept her face very close to his afterward.

"You're welcome." Before he could ask himself, mentally, "Why does she like kissing me so much?" Molly asked, "Can I lay on you? I want you on your back."

"Fair enough."

They shifted. It felt great in a couldn't-really-be-duplicated kind of way. She slid most of her body onto him, he pulled sheets up and over most of their bodies, she made their leg feel like one, she pou**red** her arms over him, he put an arm on her shoulders and back and slid it around in a random but repeating, soft pattern. Molly seemed fond of it, smiling at certain points and eventually in anticipation of those certain points.

"This is unfair," she said, resting her head sideways on his chest and looking up into his eyes. Molly was close – she could stick her tongue out and hit his lips. "I've known you for like six or seven hours and I like you more than most'a my friends." She waited for a second. He liked how sometimes while she was talking she'd rest her chin on his neck and bob her head. She added, "Friends I've known for most of my life."

Drawing a finger up her spine slowly, hardly letting it touch her, Odin said, "That's not unfair. We're _totally _supposed to be like this. However it is."

She smiled. "You're right," Molly said. "You always are."

He got the crazy eyes. The kind of crazy only kings possessed. Gruffly: "And don't you forget it."

"I won't, baby! I'm so sorry!"

He narrowed those crazy eyes. She gasped.


	3. three

**3:13 ****am**** Thursday – 12 April 2007**

**54 New Messages.  
****Exit – Read**

Odin chose read. He scrolled up, first, to get to the oldest unopened text message, and had to scroll through about 8 messages before:

"**yeah lol"**

The next one up:

"**you there"**

_No, I guess_, thought Odin. He felt a little guilty, then like he shouldn't feel a little guilty. Upset, almost, that somebody would pester him like that.

"**honey, where are you? I'm  
****freaking outside"**

_Out?_

"**plz answer me when you get  
****back, okay? I'm going to bed.  
****i love you"**

From the next few senders:

"**They snuck a snook in her sniz"**

"**In a supernova of  
****homosexuality!"**

"**Good nite n im prayin 4 ya!"**

"**okie dokie"**

The first two made him smile, even giggle, but in Polly and Molly's living room, inside of 15 feet from either of them and late at night, he wouldn't let himself laugh. He felt nervous enough just eerily blue-illuminated with his phone's backlight, and after having read those messages, he just gave up.

Except for the next message – Another from the first sender, "Honeybunny."

"**I love you. Are you mad?  
****What did I do, baby? Please  
****talk to me. I'm turning my  
****phone off 4 work but ill  
****check as soon as I get up."**

_Uh-oh._

Odin checked his voicemail. He'd missed 36 calls, 9 of them from unknown callers.

One person's voice he instantly recognized. The person said, "This is Ian. This is a message. Call me back. Bye." 8:35 p.m. Odin's caller ID called Ian "Ian."

Didn't know how he recognized the voice.

Next spake a female voice that sounded familiar, but in an I-don't-remember-this-person-but-clearly,-they-recognize-me kind of way, "Hi! Is this Odin? Call me back. Yay!" The speaker giggled throughout. This was the unknown caller. 9 p.m. He tried calling them back, pressing his phone's green-circle button, but nothing happened – private.

"I miss you, sweetie. Call me as soon as you get this message." This was a message from "Marion." 11:19 p.m., and she had an awfully alluring voice. Odin kind of wanted to call her right then.

The next call was from "Gentleman," at 12:01 a.m. Then two from "Christie Apone" so sexually explicit he didn't even listen to their entire contents for fear Molly would wake up and hear them from that far away somehow, when his volume was so low he could hardly hear it. They were fun to listen to, though, and the next message – underwhelming and from "Honeybunny" again – was so dull it stole his urge to listen to all 36 of his voicemails, so he quit.

Odin decided to cycle to Marion's entry in his address book, which took longer than he thought it would. He had what seemed to be an awful lot of people in that, most of them female but plenty male. When he got to Marion, a picture with an awfully attractive skinny but-pretty-shapely Middle Eastern-looking girl in it appeared alongside the entry. It was mostly a close-up of her face, like he was close to her when he took. Cleavage appeared too. Odin liked that, but more importantly, felt a degree of familiarity with the image. Maybe he'd taken the picture. It felt right, like he had it in muscle memory, but something about the composition made it feel like it was his too. He had photo ID for most of the people in his address book, quite a few of them being attractive women, but Marion's picture was especially fun to look at.

_No. It's after 2 in the morning._

_Yes. She's hot._

_No._

with his thumb on the green button.

Odin closed his phone.

**6:24 ****pm ****Thursday – 12 April 2007**

"Put on something loud and massage me," Darryl said, in the back seat of Odin's car, sitting down and buckling her seat belt. She didn't look that great in her scrubs, bodily. With that established, the rough-looking blue mop of an outfit, with hard creases still prevalent throughout, not only accentuated Darryl's soft-yet-sharply-lined face but nearly threw it at anyone who ca**red** glance at it. Her raven-dark long hair, ponytailed as though it was, helped the throw too.

"I can't," Odin said, pulling out the hospital's parking lot, "but I gladly will later." He put on the first iPod playlist that sounded appropriate, "Odin's Rock…Fuck!" It began with The Crystal Method's song "Realizer." It didn't feel familiar at all, but he liked how it started and let it go. "So sorry."

"It's okay," Darryl said, sighing.

"Are you bleeding?" Polly asked.

Odin and Molly, in the passenger seat, looked too. Darryl had plenty of blood on her anyway, but the bloodiest splotch area was near her neck. All the blood was dry and looked kind of coppery-brown. "Not so close that she should be dead or anything" popped into Odin's mind – a thought, but so immediate it couldn't have been his own. He didn't _know _that.

Whatever that meant, Darryl wasn't bleeding anymore. Odin detected the smell of old blood. He couldn't have known _that _either.

"I was," Darryl said. "I'm fine now."

"What happened?" Odin asked.

"Fucking hospital people."

"Your boss?" Odin asked.

Laughs. "No, it was some ER guy. Know how I said there were a lotta people there yesterday?"

"Yeah," Polly said.

"Same thing today, except more. We started out higher than normal, then we got the normal increases at the normal times, except…there were just a lotta fuckin' people there! And almost all of em had bites."

"Bites," said Odin, as kind of a question.

"_Bites_," said Darryl. "Most'a the time I was pretty sure they were from dogs 'n' shit, and some of them were – actually, a lot of 'em were – but those fuckin' victims always said they were from people. Even when they weren't. One person says 'This fucking guy bit me!' and _all _of em say 'Some guy bit me.' Like we're gonna help them sooner cuz it's weird that people'd bite other people."

"Why so many dog bites?" Odin asked.

"Don't you mean 'Why so many people bites?'" Polly said.

Darryl started letting her hair down.

"No," said Odin, "I meant what I asked. I was gonna ask about the people thing after that."

"Oh. Sorry," Polly said.

Darryl almost started. Odin almost started. Odin looked to Darryl.

"Go ahead," Darryl told him.

"You sure? I was just gonna tell Polly she was silly."

"No, I'm good. I'll remember what I was gonna say," said Darryl.

"Polly: I appreciate the apology, but, Silly Girl, it's not necessary." He skipped ahead a track in the playlist. Odin looked to Polly, then back at the road. He didn't like "Realizer" anymore. "Y'see, Polly, I talk kinda funny, and sometimes I like to know the whole story."

Next song: Daft Punk's "Human After All."

"…Okay." Polly giggled. "Your boyfriend's really goofy, hon," she said, sounding like she was looking at Molly.

Molly touched Odin's arm, led her hand to his neck. "I know," she said. "And I really like it." She giggled. She pulled his hand closest her from the steering wheel to her mouth and kissed it. "I'm sorry that's corny, but I like that I can do it."

"Why? Cuz he's kinda emotional?" Darryl asked.

"Yeah," Molly said. "What? Do you think that's bad?"

"No, I think it's hot," Darryl said. And got laughs for it. "I hate how guys don't talk about their feelings 'n' stuff like that. Like, they just kiss and fuck and think that's enough. That and gifts. Odin's different."

"Well _good_," said Molly. "If you were makin' fun of him, I was gonna hafta shoot you in the gut."

"Not a _gutshot_!" Odin said.

"Yes! A gutshot!" Molly said, looking straight at him. Everybody, it seemed, laughed at that.

"So: To get back to The Very Important Issue, Darryl, what's with the dog attack thing at work? Is there a wild pack of family dogs loose downtown or something? Hiding in the dangerous back-alleys?"

"That's a song title, isn't it?" Darryl asked.

"Yes it is," Odin said. "Now stop stalling."

She laughed. "Fine, Odin, I will." She adjusted herself a little. "This is kind of a rumor. Now, most of the people who came in complaining of dog bites were from out-of-town. Suburbs, I mean. Not from like…Utah." It got a small laugh. Darryl seemed happy with it, which was all that seemed to matter to her. "Anyway, these were mostly folks who lived near woods. The rumor has it that there _is_ a wild pack of dogs. Not, like, wolves, but dogs. Dogs from inside the city, or just the suburbs, that…went a little nuts."

"Like rabid?" Molly asked.

"Maybe, I don't know. Nobody tested positive for rabies."

"But you treated everybody for it?" Odin asked.

"We began to. It takes a couple shots."

"Sorry," Odin said.

"No, you didn't know that."

"Whew," sighed Odin.

"Oh, shut up," Polly said. More small laughs. Polly seemed to think it would get a much better response. Could be why it got a small laugh instead of the absence of a laugh.

"Maybe I will, jerk," Odin said.

"Good!"

Without waiting for a transition, Odin asked, "Okay. Now that you've gotten the dog thing out of the way, although it doesn't make sense to me why dogs would be acting that way and why there wouldn't've been a news story about it already—"

"We haven't watched the news, baby," said Molly.

Odin said quietly, "Shut up, I'm trying to make a point."

Molly whispe**red**, "Oh. Sorry. Keep going."

Odin continued. "All that stuff said, get to the thing with people biting other people. Not saying anything of how curious I am about the _why_, what's happening to the people who were bitten?"

"Hard to say. Usually they get kinda violent."

"Violent?" Molly asked. "Like, 'Pay attention to me now' violent?"

"Sorta. They just…attack people."

Odin finished, "by biting them."

"Yeah."

"And that's what happened to…near your neck," said Odin.

"Yes it is," Darryl said. Odin noticed that she didn't sound very just-bitten in the neck.

Asked Odin, "Are you gonna get violent, Darryl? I don't wanna hafta choke you."

She giggled. "I'm not gonna get violent, baby. Not around you." She sounded odd saying that, but alluring, in a normally-businesslike-now-without-warning-soft kind of way that threatened at turning Odin on a little.

"Good," he said. "I know I've said that a lot recently, but…it's necessary."

"Yes it is," Molly said, rubbing his arm.

"Have you figu**red** out why certain people get violent when they're bitten?" Odin asked.

"No," Darryl said, "not at all."

"How many of them get violent? Like, relative how many don't."

"I don't know that. My boss does, but he didn't particularly share it."

Odin dismissed it: "That jerk."

"Yes, that jerk," Darryl said.

"That jerk," Molly added.

"Thank you," Darryl said. "So: That's the situation. Most of them got violent. I think it depends on where they got bitten."

Odin asked, "How's that?"

"I'm not sure, but it's got a lot to do with blood."

"Is it some kinda disease?"

"Again, I'm not sure. It could be – some people don't seem real affected by it. But: That doesn't take into account what I was just saying. It seems to depend on where they're bitten. One guy was almost dead from blood loss when he got to the hospital, and within a minute or two he was pretty damn violent."

"Where was he bitten?"

"In the neck," she said, putting a hand on her neck. Not where she'd been bitten, kind of on the shoulder, but at the base, and on the opposite side of her neck as if to say "But, uh, I'm no threat. See? Other side."

"Ah so, it all comes back to the neck. It was vampire-people, wasn't it?" Odin asked.

"_Must've_ been," Darryl said. "Nobody else bites in the neck."

"Right," Polly said. "I knew it all along." Like she was a detective.

"Good instincts, Polly dearest," said Odin.

"Thank you, Odin darling."

"Oh, Polly, you're so very welcome."

She laughed. Then it infected everybody else.

"What about other bite locations? Like, you _near _the neck. Do the violent people bite only near there, or is it a wherever-they-can-gain-purchase kinda thing?"

"That," Darryl said. "One guy was in the waiting room for the ER. Bitten, but in, like, the arm. Hardly even bothe**red** by it, just didn't know how take care of himself. We learned that later, by the way."

"Right," Odin said.

"So he's sitting there. The guy next to him got bitten a whole fuckin' bunch'a times, bloody as shit. He passes out. Everybody who gets violent passes out first. Then the guy wakes up. When you see one of 'em wake up, you just _know_ they're gonna do something fucked-up, cuz…there's somethin' about their eyes."

"Just something? Do they blink less?" Odin asked.

"How'd you know?"

"Know what? I'm just guessing."

"When they get violent they _stop_ blinking."

Molly kissed Odin's cheek. "You're so smart!"

"I am!" He thought about it. "I'm kinda sca**red**, though. Something about those violent people feels wrong to me."

"It's pretty fucking scary in the hospital too. You're walking down the hallway and you're completely surrounded by a bunch of 'em – even if it's just for a second – you just _know_ something's fuckin' bad about it. I mean, yeah, there were never more than five or six of 'em around me at a time, and even if they all lunged at me I could just crawl out and run or something, but…I dunno. Good guess about the eyes, by the way."

"Thanks, but I was really only guessing. I didn't say they didn't blink," Odin said.

"Yeah, but you guessed blinking. _I_ wouldn't have," Darryl said.

"Then I'm forced to repeat myself: Thank you, Darryl."

"Dear, you're welcome," she said.

He smiled.

"Everybody loves you _so much_, honey!" Molly said, holding his arm like she'd hug him if they weren't in a car. "I could just kiss you!"

They laughed.

"Get back to the bite stuff," said Odin. "I'm nervous about that."

"About _me_?"

"Of course not," Odin said. "I trust you. I mean people walking around with bites 'n' stuff." Then he realized what he said: "Who aren't you."

She laughed. "I know what you mean, it's a phrasing thing. Some people I saw bitten never seemed that bothe**red**, other than, y'know, they got fucking _bitten_ – by a dog or whatever. Person, I mean."

"It's only people or dogs?" Polly asked.

"Yeah," Darryl said. "I don't know why."

"Can't dogs catch anything else?" Odin asked.

"Maybe not," Darryl said, laughing.

"With bites – it depends on where they are. Some people never got violent."

"Yeah, but maybe it would just take longer."

"Good point. What's the longest you saw somebody bitten _not_ get violent?"

"Only a couple people, and they were there for a while. We had them in the same place – I think they didn't get bitten by any of the 'violent' people, though."

"What do you mean?" Molly asked.

"Well…I dunno. When the violent people bit people, they always bit other people as they could, or started trying to…eat stuff."

"_Eat _stuff? They bit people to _eat_ them? Yuck," Polly said, sounding disgusted. Odin checked his rear-view mirror for a look at her – she was shaking a little. Just enough to be decla**red** "shaking."

"I guess. I really…don't like thinking about that," Darryl said, "but I think so. If they bit somebody and that person didn't shake 'em off or something, they'd _keep_ biting, and…they always tried to tear skin off."

"When they tore skin off, did they spit it out?" Odin asked.

"No," Darryl said. She sounded intrigued. "You're onto something. Have you seen this kinda thing before?"

"Nope," Odin said.

Molly looked at him – and he felt Darryl and Polly looking at him – like he was lying and completely not trying to hide it. _Too laid-back. This is too serious for that._

"I'm sorry my tone was like that. I really haven't seen this before." He looked at Molly, then Darryl. He couldn't really see Polly. "I'm not kidding."

"You're forgiven," Molly said.

"Thank you."

Said Darryl, "But…yeah, the people who bite people always try to feed."

"Explain the passing out thing," said Odin. When he started speaking he realized it was going to come out as an imperative like that, so he tried to make it sound as much like a gentle question-by-suggestion as he could.

"_That _I really can't explain. It's like…I dunno."

Odin said, "You're just that confused."

"I seriously am," Darryl said, and then coughed into her sleeve.

"What happens when they pass out?" Odin asked. "Keep in mind when answering this that when you answer it, you should feel free to go into as much boring medical detail as you'd like to."

Darryl laughed. "Okay, hon." She took a breath. "Basically, when people get bitten – by the 'violent' people – they get…I dunno. Most of the time they bleed out. Sometimes…I think it's a virus."

She thought for a few seconds.

Odin prompted: "You said they bleed out? Like…'out' of life?

"_That's _why it's so fucking confusing."

Molly leaned into Odin and whispe**red**, "Sounds like you hit the nail on the head, baby. High five."

She and Odin did that as Darryl continued:

"Technically – no, I mean, _literally_, when they…they die."

"When they pass out, as you said, they don't really pass out. They die. Is that correct?" said Odin.

"Yes."

Polly asked, "How's that even possible?"

Said Molly, at the same time as Polly, "What?"

Darryl began with "However" at the same time Polly and Molly spoke. Odin didn't say anything, confused, but noticed that "Human After All" had crossfaded into In Flames' "Take this Life" at some point. _I guess I liked "Human After All."_

"Let her talk, _Polly_," Odin said, like Polly was completely out-of-line to speak at the same time as Darryl, and like Molly just hadn't.

"I'm sorry! _Jeez_!" Polly said. She got a pretty good laugh out of it, too, sounding like Chris Farley, if he were a short white woman who weighed about 110 pounds.

"Take it easy, Odin. She's just trying to help," Molly said.

"No! No!" Odin said, faux-angry, adding a teeny faux-tantrum.

Molly held his arm, cooing, "It's okay, baby. It's gonna be okay."

"What the fuck's your guys' problem?" Darryl said.

More laughter.

Said Odin, "Darryl, dearest, please keep talking."

"Okay, I will, now that the seriousness of the situation's _dead_."

"Don't be melodramatic, ya pooner," Odin said. He started his next sentence, but laughter from the women completely cut him off. _That was that funny? I was just saying it._

A few seconds later…

"Am I…good?" He looked between the women.

"Yeah, go," Polly said.

Odin said, "Uh…keep going, Darryl."

"Okay. Now: When those bitten people, as I said, pass out, they _die_, medically speaking. They don't have a pulse anymore, their hearts…stop, and…I dunno, they're dead. Does that make sense?"

A second as nobody took the mantle of answering the question.

Odin cut in first, without hesitation. He'd only waited because he felt like Polly was waiting to say something. He said "yeah."

"Cool," Darryl said. "So, they're dead. But then they kinda wake up."

"How much later?" asked Odin. "After they pass out."

"I'm not sure. Not long at all. A couple seconds, I guess. I think it's varies a little but it's prob'ly not more than five or 10 seconds."

"Huh," Molly said. "I woulda thought it'd be a couple minutes or something."

"I would've too," Odin said.

From Darryl: "Yeah."

"What then? Apart from being kinda bitey when they wake up, what do they act like?"

"I'm not sure how to answer that. They're just…like that."

"They're jerks?" Odin said.

"Yeah, they are!" Darryl said. "One'a the fuckers bit me!"

Odin said, "Yeah, what kinda jerk-move is that?"

"I know, right?" Polly said.

Laughter. Everybody seemed as confused as everybody else as to what to think about Darryl's fun day at work.

Said Darryl, "What'd you three do?"

"I _worked_," Polly said.

"That's at Barnes and Noble, right?" Odin asked.

"Yeah," Polly said. "I work on the floor, like any other jerk."

"Don't you cut yourself down," Odin said. "You're not like any other jerk. Your name's 'Polly' and you have a roommate named 'Molly.' I mean, come on."

Laughs.

"You're right, Odin. Thank you. You're my best friend."

More laughs.

"I know," Odin said. "What happened at work?"

"The usual. Helped stock stuff, helped some people, didn't really like anybody, got a few guys' numbers."

"Anybody you're gonna call?" Darryl asked.

"No!" Polly said. "I hate it when guys just gimme their numbers like that. It was even worse when I worked at…I don't remember, my last job. Sometimes when people gave me receipts and stuff they'd write their number on it. I'd always be all, 'Why the fuck're you hitting on me at work? I hate my job. If I associate it with you, and you didn't make my day better in some way, I'm going to associate you with hat**red**. Nice plan, dumbass.'"

Laughter.

"I never get why guys do that," said Odin. "Does it make sense to anybody else?"

"You mean why guys just hand out their cellphone numbers, right? Not why they'd hit on women," said Darryl.

"Yes, Darryl, I mean _that_."

"I don't get it. Maybe it's just me, but if I meet a guy at work, the only way I'll wanna see him again is if I hafta ask for his number or if I give him mine."

"Has that ever happened?" asked Odin.

"Once," Darryl said. "It ended badly. I used to have _two _legs."

Laughter. Molly looked at Darryl's two legs like she needed that kind of reassurance.

Said Polly, "You're an idiot, Molly."

Said Molly, "Shut up, Polly! I'll kill you!"

"Oh yeah?"

Without any real inflection or emotion, Odin said "Stop it both of you" in one breath.

Laughter.

Odin said, "To get back to you and work, though: Nothing cool happened." Half-question.

"That's correct," she said. "There wasn't really even any good music on."

"What do you consider good and bad?"

"I dunno," she said. "I generally like older stuff."

"Before you finish that thought: I feel like listening to something softer," Odin said. "Do you still want loud stuff, Darryl?"

"No," she said. "You made me feel so much better." In one breath without a pause like that – without meaning it.

"Good," Odin said. He went to another playlist he'd learned he liked earlier today with Molly, "Funstuff." It had a lot of titles of songs that Odin felt positively familiar with but didn't remember, and his iPod was set to shuffle. First song: Love's "Old Man." Odin reflected: _Interesting album cover_.

Maybe 15 seconds later Polly said, "I like this, as far as I can tell. I don't really like top 40 stuff, or…most alternative stuff. I like a lotta music, but some stuff I just hate."

Said Odin, "Maybe it's just me, but I don't get that, Polly."

"No, it really didn't make sense," Darryl said.

"_Darryl_!" Said Polly, irritated.

"What? He's right."

Said Odin, "Name some of your favorite bands 'n' stuff."

"Okay," Polly said. "Love, The Rolling Stones, Modest Mouse, David Bowie, The Arcade Fire, DeVotchKa–"

Interrupted Odin, "Real old-timey, Polly. Jeez. Come to the 21st century, old lady."

"Shut up! I was just thinking."

"I had to make fun of you, Polly. You understand."

"No." Ingratefully.

Molly held Odin's arm, rubbed it. With her lips emphasized sweetly, she said, "It's okay, baby. She's just being mean right now."

Odin looked at Polly, then back at the road, then Molly, then road. "Still hurts."

Polly said "That's weird," but Odin and Molly igno**red** her.

Molly continued, "You'll be okay, Odin. I promise."

"I believe you."

Said Polly, "I also like The White Stripes, and Bob Dylan, and Bright Eyes, or…anything that Conor guy does, and Johnny Cash, Yes, the Talking Heads, the Beatles…Kaiser Chiefs, Pere Ubu, The Stooges, Velvet Underground…I can't think of anything else."

"It's fine," said Odin. "When you're on the spot like that you never list the stuff you really mean to say."

"I'm so glad you understand."

"Yes. I'm so glad too," said Odin, with deliberate awkwardness.

Polly laughed.

"What'd you two do?" Darryl asked.

"Very little," Molly said, "which was why it was so perfect. We did some shopping, and – know how I said he threw his wallet away?"

"Yeah," Polly said.

"We got him a new one. We mostly hung out a lot, and had lunch _and_ breakfast together, and we got Odin's car back…hey, are you two okay with him driving? In his car? I like it a lot better than my Sunfire."

"I love it," Darryl said. "I'd still feel that way if my car weren't so fucked, but…I'd be more jealous."

Laughter. Polly, sans-car, was a little quiet about everything.

"Did you make out lots-upon-lots?" Darryl asked.

"Can I tell her?" Molly asked Odin.

"Yeah. Be as honest in front of me as you would without me here, okay? I hate influencing how people behave. I…try not to."

"I promise I'll be…upfront," Molly said. "Girls?"

"What?" Polly said.

"Can you be honest with Odin?"

"I can," Darryl said, "but you knew that."

"Yeah, I did."

"Sure, I'll…be honest," Polly said.

"Now tell us about the hot goings-on between you two," Darryl said.

"We made out _plenty_."

"No dick?" Polly asked.

"No, Polly, no 'dick.' Odin's a gentleman. He didn't try to shove my head in his crotch, or grab at _my_ crotch, or _anything_." She looked to Odin. "But he could have."

He smiled.

"I kinda like it. Sometimes I get…excited, but…I dunno, I just don't feel like I hafta do shit I don't want to with him." A little ashamed, self-conscious.

of Odin. _Fuck._

"Does that mean you're not gonna give 'im anything?" Darryl said.

"No, Smart One, it _doesn't_. I have plans."

"Plans you'd share if he weren't a foot from you?" Polly asked.

"No, they're plans I _wouldn't share_," Molly said.

"And why's that?" Darryl asked.

"Because they're dirty," Molly said.

Odin felt his phone vibrate again.

"I saw you making out when we saw _Hills Have Eyes_ yesterday," Polly said. "I kinda thought you were gonna give him a handjob."

"Have you since corrected that mistake?" Darryl asked.

"Why are you two so concerned with oral stuff? We _didn't_, okay?" Molly said, irritated, but more embarrassed.

"I just got the impression you were a little more intimate than that," Polly said. "…Sorry."

Appeased, Molly looked to Darryl.

Said Darryl, "What?"

Molly asked, "Are you gonna apologize for making me really, _really_ uncomfortable in front of my boyfriend, Darryl, one of my best friends?"

"No. I don't hafta explain myself."

"Yeah, that's cuz it's obvious nobody wants you," Polly said. "You act too manly."

"Some guys like that," said Darryl.

"And some _don't_," Polly said.

"Are you mad at me, somehow?" Darryl asked.

"No, I'm not," Polly said. "But for Molly, I'm a little annoyed with how you're acting all of a sudden. Don't get like that, okay?"

"Whatever." Picking at her nails.

"What'd you have for lunch?" Polly asked Molly, flipping out of her previously-antagonistic mood.

"We had hot dogs, and they were great, and Odin was such a gentleman he wouldn't let me pay."

"Cough," Odin said.

"Oh yeah, and Odin hates eating. I promised him we're going to gang up on him whenever he won't eat. Like at dinner tonight, whatever we do."

"Is that true, Odin?" Polly asked.

"You need to eat so you won't get violent," Darryl said.

"That's crap," Odin said.

Giggles.

"Yeah, it's true," Molly said.

"Why won't he eat? Did he eat at lunch?"

"You're damn right he did," Molly said. "I kissed him every time he took a drink or a bite of something, and I kinda shoved some fruit in his mouth too."

"Did you do the buzzy bee?" Darryl asked.

"No, I did the choo-choo train. I was afraid I'd spit on him if I said Bs a lot."

"Why?" Polly asked.

"Well…I really like making my lips kinda look bigger when I talk like that, and I hafta emphasize the B stuff, so I'd _definitely_ spit on him if I did that."

Laughs.

Inserted Odin, "She spit on me anyway."

"Yeah," Molly said, looking away from everyone slightly, like she'd blush.

Which was when the oncoming car slammed into them.


	4. four

**6:54 ****pm**** Thursday – 12 April 2007**

Upside-down, suspended by his seatbelt not far from the ceiling of his car, with…something in pain, Odin, unable to move for whatever reason, could only think about

**8:19 ****pm**** Wednesday – 11 April 2007**

Molly rubbed at Odin's hand, on her thigh. He'd been holding her hand, which was pretty sweaty, but she reclaimed it at some point. He wonde**red** why until he saw her wiping sweat off it. Then she did something he couldn't see. Feeling like a jerk with his hand just on the cupholder like that he put it on her thigh. A thing that could indicate a variety of intentions, Odin put his hand on Molly's thigh simply to have it touching her somewhere, and not on the cupholder. The seats in the theater were built for people not to have their arms around one another, as far as Odin could tell, so that was out, and comfortably, he couldn't really have it anyplace else. When Molly was done doing whatever she did with her hands, she put her hand over his. So it went.

"Hey," she said. Dialogue went by onscreen. On Molly's other side he saw her friend Darryl glance at him. No, not _at_ him. Directly into his eyes. He glanced to hers but focused on Molly.

"Hey what?" They were close, like if he wanted to he could poke the tip of her nose with his tongue, or so Molly, if she deemed it necessary, could stick her tongue between his lips. Odin did not know why he thought of distance in terms of tongue-reach.

"I'm quite fond of you," Molly said, with a smile.

"That makes me feel happy inside," Odin said. "Apart from that I don't know what to say."

Her eyes closed. She put her hand on his arm, pulled him a little closer. Not that it would really pull him closer, because of how he was positioned. He leaned closer, nervous and hoping she wanted him to.

Yeah. When he was close, still unsure what he wanted to do, her face leaned into his a little. She couldn't lean much more than that, if she could lean closer. Molly's mouth met his and she sealed her lips over his, opened her mouth. He could easily have resisted but instead he did not, closing his eyes. His heart swooned and he felt like he was free-falling from a 10-story building –

Wet. Warm. Her tongue slipped into his mouth a little, familiarized itself with his front teeth.

Odin pulled back. Pressure popped their lips apart. He kept their lips close, their faces touching. Her hand wande**red** up his arm a little, from just above the elbow to near his shoulder, getting behind him a little more. Her breath pou**red** onto his face and neck. She wasn't breathing hard, but she was breathing fast. He might've been, but he couldn't really feel his body, either.

Odin put his hand on her face, but so gently it was more like "Odin slid his hand onto her cheek." She rubbed his nose with hers slowly, maneuvering too, and leaned her mouth back into his. He pulled back a little. She halted. He kissed the corner of her mouth. He kissed her bottom lip. She went for his mouth full-on. She met him there, almost interrupting him.

Tongues met wetly, hotly. Massaged each other. A sizable breath pou**red** out her nose. He da**red** to take a breath, but tried to suppress it as much as possible. Their bodies got even closer somehow. She rubbed at the top of his arm. He caressed her cheek. He felt one of her feet – no, now both her feet – come to his legs and hook one of them near his ankle. Like, "You're not getting away. I won't let you."

**6:56 ****pm**** Thursday – 12 April 2007**

Odin fell and almost hit his head square on the ceiling of his car. He would've if he hadn't leaned a little. Instead, he thudded on his back.

_I unplugged my belt, didn't I?_

It certainly looked that way.

Molly seemed okay. Darryl had a rivulet of blood going down – no, up – her face. It would either smear and soak into her hair or drip off in about five seconds. Polly…he couldn't tell.

He looked around. His car was bent, but not so much that he couldn't see out the windows. It was leaning forward, but behind and to the sides of his car, he didn't see whomever had hit him. _No. Us._

His iPod was still playing, the car still on. John Mayer's "The Heart of Life." _That's just unfair._

Odin cut the engine. The iPod hushed. The silence that brought with it was oppressive. Odin couldn't hear anything…except the ringing in his ears.

"Can any of you hear me?"

About nine of Odin's heartbeats later

was too long.

_Oh fuck. What do I do? Is it safe to pull 'em down, or will that, like, fuck their spines up?_

_I'm gonna do it anyway. I can't not. If it fucks them up, I'll hafta live with it feeling like I did the right thing here._

First he opened his door – worked fine. It was way too quiet outside.

Molly was first. Positioning himself wasn't hard at all – he'd cut the belt with a boot knife that fell out of his glovebox, that wasn't in there when he checked it with Molly this morning, and she'd fall onto his chest. He'd crawl out backward, keeping her straight.

The belt went easily, the knife much sharper than it looked. It performed like a razor.

With a quiet thud her weight shifted into him. She was much lighter than he thought she would be.

It was more difficult than he thought but about 30 seconds later, she was out, safe. Odin laid her on her side.

**7:08 ****pm**** Friday – 5 April 2007**

And then all the women were there. Molly would wake up after a little while. Evidently her right arm hurt like shit, but she felt completely normal otherwise.

Polly was out, but okay, except, as Odin said, "that her left arm looked broken or out-of-socket."

He got Darryl last. Her large neck bite's scab had re-opened a little, and bled through her bandage, which was already wet with the stuff. With that one exception, she seemed alright. Odin felt pretty assu**red** of her survival when, once he set her down, he ran back into his car to see if he forgot anything,

and he was wrong.

He checked for people's belongings. Two smallish purses, Darryl's ridiculous pint-size backpack. Then he looked at his glovebox. Something in there was shouting at him, for him. It needed his attention, and he needed to listen to whatever it had to say.

What it had to say was that there was a secret compartment in his glovebox, the kind Honda wouldn't have supplied. The kind that nobody would see at the top, disguised as just a bend in the plastic. In addition to "There's a clandestine secret compartment in the glovebox," the little voice in Odin's upside-down car told him two things. The first was that the boot knife had a little slot of its own. The second was "There's a holste**red** Heckler and Koch USP45 Compact Tactical in here with a few extra loaded magazines!"

He hadn't expected that there would be a little voice calling out to him in the car, much less than it would have anything useful to share with him.

It was then that Odin realized he was ambidextrous. Since he could remember, he'd been doing whatever he did with either of his hands, but nobody, including him, had paid any special attention to that. He just assumed he was right-handed. Like anybody else.

With the gun was a license. It reminded him of his driver's license. He didn't consider keeping the gun until he saw the license, though.

Odin came out the car with the pistol in one hand, its four extra magazines in his other. The holster was an in-the-pants type, which was exactly what it sounded like it was. The pistol was a little bulkier than he was comfortable with, but something felt fucking _wrong_, and while the gun wouldn't make it right, it would keep the wrong thing, or things, away from the people he loved, who were Molly, Polly and Darryl, but he assumed there were others, like Marion.

He studied the USP45CT, facing the car, before he stuck it on his person. It wasn't exactly big, but it wasn't small. It was short. It was black and blocky, and looked like a cross between whatever normal gun, a knife and a hawk. He checked it, not knowing how he knew what to check, and made sure that it wasn't loaded, and wasn't cocked. It had a round in the chamber. Odin took the magazine out, then kicked the chambered round out with a pull of the slide. He put the magazine back in, then, with his thumb on the gun's exposed hammer, pulled the trigger in partway. When the hammer started to drop, he eased it down, decocking the gun. He threw the spare bullet into some grass near the car

and wondered how he knew to do all that. It felt so familiar.

More important than all the surface stuff about the USP45, though, Odin felt comfortable with it. He didn't really feel like his car was his, and he didn't really have much stuff in it anyway – apart from the clean clothes he was wearing, from the trunk – but this gun felt like home to him somehow. Like somebody'd made the pistol grip just for him, but it didn't look like that had actually happened.

He detached from that line of thought and holste**red** it, then put two of the magazines in his butt pocket. Odin's pants were tight enough to keep them still, but that might've been more uncomfortable than pants that let them jangle around. He conside**red** carrying all four extra magazines, but that would just be too much.

Odin and company were by the overpass he was on when the other car hit them. He couldn't see the other car anywhere, or hear…anything. As far as he could tell, when the car hit him, he slid off the road. Maybe he fishtailed a little and came off backward or something. Once off the road, the car fell onto a slope – a long one by the overpass. He could tell where they fell out because the cement barrier there was broken clean-out. On that slope, the car slid, to the edge, then probably past it a little. Then it teete**red**. If he was conscious when that happened, he didn't remember it at all. After the car teete**red**, it failed the test and rolled to the right, onto its roof, where it now rest.

Odin checked on Molly, Polly and Darryl, who were pretty far from the car.

When he got close, Molly walked close like she was going to hug him, then, instead, held onto him. She was crying.

"What is it?"

"Darryl's dead." She was wailing, sobbing, and hardly speaking English.

"Are you sure?" Odin asked, stroking her hair. It worked okay, but she was still a little taller than him. He wonde**red** how well he would be able to console her.

"Yeah," she said. "We both checked her pulse."

He looked at Darryl. Between him and Darryl was Polly, teary but not crying, her hands in his pockets. When he looked at her, he tried to do it in a manner that would suggest she walk to him and make his embrace a group hug.

She hesitated for a second, like she'd been waiting for that, and like she'd almost just come over there, to be held, to be with Molly. She didn't come, though. She looked into Odin's eyes like there was some secret between them, then turned around and walked to Darryl, who was on the ground.

"Did you see anything after the car hit us? I think I passed out," Odin said, kissing Molly where he could – which was her cheek. He pulled one of her arms off him and kissed the back of her hand too. She was crying hard, but her body was so weak she didn't resist him, if she would have.

"I don't know," she said. She sounded like she didn't remember whatever she'd seen, but that she'd seen more than him.

Darryl was moving, Odin noticed, hearing her move. Maybe Darryl had been moving for a while.

Odin rubbed Molly's back, or stroked her hair, or did both if he didn't feel like that'd open her up too much. Molly was crying, and Odin felt like he was about to join her if he hadn't already, as choked-up as he felt. Molly was quieting down a little.

Darryl was moaning. Maybe she had been for a while.

"Fuck."

"What?" Molly asked, dully, like she needed to lay down or sleep.

"Something's wrong."

"With what?"

"Darryl. I gotta see if she's violent now."

"I'll let go if you promise you won't let her bite you. Even if you have to push her or something," Molly said.

"I promise I won't let her bite me. I won't hurt her though."

"Well…don't hesitate to."

Polly screamed, and less than a second later, Odin saw what made her scream, whipping his head around to face the scene.

To anybody else, Darryl might have looked like she was being embosomed by Polly, but it could also look like Darryl was necking Polly. Even without the blood, though, Odin knew that Darryl was biting – tearing – into Polly's neck, near the base between it and her shoulder. Odin felt like he was supposed to hear muscles being pulled taut and snapping as Darryl ripped flesh off Polly, but Darryl's feeding was completely quiet – at least to Odin, but he wasn't that close, either. What Odin did hear, though, were Polly's screams, but after a few seconds – maybe Darryl bit through her esophagus – Polly got pretty quiet, except for occasional pitifully small, wet gurgles. Polly was still standing after all that, but she was standing still. Considering what was happening with Polly's blood, Darryl's actions were very obvious. The viscous red stuff, outstanding with contrast from everything else Odin could see, was soundless, although spraying, erupting, up in great gushes from Polly and into Darryl's face, into the air and even on Polly. More of it came every 1/3 of a second or so, with Polly's heartbeat.

Odin didn't notice it, but, observing what Darryl was doing to Polly, he said, "Fuck."

**8:23 ****pm**** Thursday – 12 April 2007**

"Would you like to tell me what happened here?"

"Yeah. I was driving like normal. When I say like normal, I mean exactly that. Nobody was on drugs or drinking or…making a ruckus. I'd been watching this car approach us–"

"What kinda car was that?"

"Buick, within the last couple years, white. Okay condition – like, it'd hit _something_, or maybe a couple somethings, before it hit me, but it hit me pretty solid…ly."

The police officer took note of that, and by how slowly his hand moved and how much he wrote, he evidently took note in shorthand.

"It hit you from head-on?"

"Yeah, and…hard enough to make me spin. I don't remember what happened between then and me waking up upside-down, but I have a _guess_ at what happened, if you'd like to hear it again too."

"Yeah, you already told me that. And then you said you brought all three other occupants of your vehicle – these three women – outside the vehicle, and put them on their sides, over there, approximately 40 feet from the vehicle, by the overpass?"

"That's right."

"Good work. And you set them all on their sides?"

"Yeah."

"And after two of them awoke…" The officer checked his notes. "Miss Harper and Miss Oakley – her and her" (the officer gestu**red** with his pen at Molly and Polly) "you went back into your vehicle to check for first-aid kits or anything of the sort?" Polly was on the ground where Darryl had bitten into her, pale, very thoroughly bloodstained, and dead. Darryl was in the officer's car, handcuffed, and only slightly less bloody than Polly. Molly was next to Odin, holding him, and in turn being held by him.

"I did. That's when I found two of their purses, the…Darryl's backpack, and a gun I didn't remember I had."

"Which you have a license for."

"Correct."

"And you don't remember paying for it or anything?"

"Correct."

"That's odd," the officer said. "I sympathize, though. Sometimes I forget I have Bruce here," he said, gripping his sidearm and shifting it a little to emphasize his point. "And sometime within a few moments of then, Miss…Waddell got up and bit into Miss Oakley's neck, from the front."

"Right." As the cop wrote a few things down, Odin asked, "Have you ever had to point Bruce at anybody?"

"Have you been watching the news, Sir?"

Molly giggled.

"No," Odin said.

"And she hasn't either?" the officer asked.

"No, she hasn't. Is it something about the people who bite people?" Odin gestu**red** to Darryl, who was staring at the three people outside the car, biting at the glass only to slide down and leave a bloody saliva trail, again and again and again. She showed no signs of stopping and did it every second or two. "Like her?"

"Yeah." The officer looked to Darryl, squirming about in the back seat of his car. His gaze remained there for what felt like a full minute. "Exactly like her."

Odin asked, "You call them zombies, don't you? When you're not around civilians?"

"How'd you know?"

"I'm just good at guessing."

"You always do things correctly on the first try, don't you?"

"Yep."

"I have a buddy like that at the station."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Tasso looked up from his notebook and grinned, genuinely. "Chief O'Neill."

Odin smiled broadly. So did Molly.

"Wow. I feel pretty cool for that association."

"You should," the officer said. Odin checked his nameplate obsessive-compulsively – "TASSO."

"Is there…anything else you need to know?" Odin asked.

"No sir, not that I'm aware of. The station may contact you later. The backup I called for should pick you up with a half-hour. They'll take you two to the hospital to do a check-up for insurance."

"But not Polly?" Molly asked.

"No."

An uncomfortable second or two of silence later, Odin asked, "Aren't you gonna wait with us?"

"No," Tasso said, with a grin like "What kinda money do you think the station has?" "That's standard-procedure, but…the city's a little…messy."

"Are a lot of people biting other people?"

"It's really only like that in the hospital's ER. We had one small riot in the city, a building burned down, but…we don't have that great a police presence. So it's…precarious."

"The police presence's been down since the mayor put more money into rehab, right?" Molly asked.

Sergeant Tasso looked at Polly like she was either intelligent or some kind of Insider, it being the proper-noun variety. "Right." His tone suggested exactly what his look did, but it pushed Odin's perception of Tasso's opinion toward "thinks she's an Insider."

"So…we'll see you later?" Odin asked.

"Probably not."

"Is it seriously okay for me to keep the gun I had? I feel like you're supposed to take it."

Said Tasso, not seriously, "If you accidentally left it in my car, without the license or any means of tracking you down, I'd, uh…"

Odin put his hands up as if to say "I'm uninvolved." "Hey…people don't just _misplace _HK pistols."

"I guess not," Tasso said, opening his car door. "I miss the old days."

Giggle. Not really – Odin did it supportively, but Molly stayed quiet, clearly as uncomfortable as Odin.

"You have the proper license for concealed carry and for owning the gun. I don't see any issue with it. Just don't shoot anybody."

Said Odin, "Deal."


	5. five

**11:30 am Friday, 13 April 2007**

Walking Darryl's dog Pete with Molly, Odin felt pretty Goddamn happy. Bright day; flowers; sunshine; over-saturated, delicious, popping vivid colors, with a slight sepia-toned tint from the sunlight, and even better flowery smells; they also weren't in the city downtown, so no strange, unpleasant and/or foul industrial-chemical odors; and instead, there were people walking, playing and jogging around everywhere, talking to each other and smiling—rather than sleep-deprived, stressed near breaking, and ornery and bitter and hateful. It was as if for the past few months everybody in Dalton had been stuck in sinkholes, but since the temperature rose and was friendly toward humans again, the sinkholes winked out of existence and gladly spat out the people trapped inside them, at some point switching their winter clothes into different ones befitting spring/summer, which made them cheery, lively, and somehow kept them from being as disagreeable as usual. Maybe it was some kind of one-day special.

Maybe Odin was just trying to think of a way to describe Molly's legs, as he sta**red** at and enjoyed them, and thought about things to do to them, and how much Molly would like those things. And, not to be rude, but her ass too. That was the only word he could even think of when he found that part of her in his eyes, except maybe "fantastic." He certainly noticed the ass-zone of his girlfriend, but for whatever reason his eyes were drawn much more to her legs: the front or the back of either, and her knees, and calves and thighs—and to all of them more than Molly's fabulous white-girl booty. And it was fabulous. Her outfit's tight white t-shirt, blue shorts and matching blue sandals emphasized her legs, which while not all that muscular were nonetheless perfect, or so Odin was trying to articulate. Maybe the outfit was part of the draw. He couldn't help it. Resisting just made it more rewarding to look at them, and just enjoy liking Molly so much. "Look great in short shorts" was accurate and true but too direct, literal, blunt, and just such a _guyish _thing to say. Such a compliment might not flatter at all. At least it wasn't vulgar.

The dog, Pete—a big mixed-breed dog, apparently mostly husky, with one green eye and one blue—lunged at something. Or pulled with his entire body against the leash toward, anyway. Odin seemed to recall people saying that heterochromia iridis—the two different eye colors—indicated that dogs were crazy, or something. Maybe they were right, but when he saw such a thing in a cat, dog, or anything else, all it indicated was kind of a strange beauty, or sometimes just looked odd or wrong, like disfigu**red**, like when people got animals and didn't take care of or igno**red** them. Pete had lunged at a rabbit, as far as Odin could tell, but between it and them were several people's entire lawns and about twice as many 6-foot-tall chain-link fences. It looked like a rabbit, anyway.

"Relax, Pete," Odin said, calm, but needing to use muscle. He wanted to say it a little louder but felt like that wouldn't help, or wouldn't make a difference. It wasn't easy to keep the mutt back: Based on Odin's experience with it so far, it felt like a bag of bricks with a pulse, and a purpose, and a drive to defy sometimes. He wonde**red** what it could do with a smaller less muscular person like Molly, or Darryl.

"I think it's okay, honey," Molly said, with a bright smile on her face, and over her lips, and in her eyes; putting an arm around him, mainly to soothe and reassure, and to touch him because she loved to; but also to placate a little. He didn't stare, but he let himself appreciate the view of Molly for a second or two. It made the battle of wills with the dog worthwhile.

Odin said, "I know, but he's out for . . . blood." The last word came from him with reluctance, in part because when Molly sensed it coming she tensed up a little—she cringed, saying _"Odin"_ in a disheartened whisper, asking for him to hold her and calm her a little, and leaned against and into him, and her muscles clenched, and trembled just enough for him to feel it. He had this feeling like he needed to complete the sentence, and that once he'd already said all but the last word, it didn't matter if he said that one too or didn't, so he'd pushed the rest out, though it came quietly.—and also partly because thinking about Darryl, and Darryl's . . . _eating_ . . . Polly squeezed and pulled and twisted at his heart, but instead of blood, it pou**red** this awkward shrieking terror and sharp pain into his bloodstream. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe saying the word was committing to something. He'd seen zombies before?, somehow, but . . . whatever. It was just suburban mass hysteria, mixed with rabies maybe, and fever, and symptoms of life in general, affecting a gullible population in an under-funded, under-staffed hospital, they said. All was well, they said. Maybe they were right. Also, Molly had absolutely fabulous legs.

Molly said "I know that too," then snaked in front of Odin, pulled his face into her with both her hands and kissed him deeply, briefly. For a second before she committed to that kiss Odin had thought she was going to embosom him somehow, and he noticed he needed that badly. But said nothing.

It was a big kiss. He pou**red** himself into it. After a quiet but concrete humming moan of pleasure, Molly pou**red** back. Afterward he smiled. So did she. She said "Sorry, was just surprised. But I liked it." He said it was alright but felt like he wasn't supposed to comment on the other part, so didn't. When she reclaimed her former position beside Odin, his eyes racked focus to the dog in front of him.

"You watched that, didn't you?" he asked the dog. Could dogs smile? Because it looked like it. Fuzzy little bastard.

"Hey," Molly said, "there's a really cool ice cream place in the town center thing up there. Wanna get some _ice cream_?" She clearly did, gesturing ahead of them. She looked and sounded full of energy, springy. And beautiful.

"Sure," Odin said.

Pete was with them because Darryl's other best friend, Micaela, had to work. But she could watch him tomorrow. Odin kind of wanted to be alone with Molly, but the dog was pretty cool. Maybe it would keep them from crying . . . more. Odin couldn't help thinking of Darryl when he looked into the dog's massive, richly saturated eyes. It was as if Pete were trying to convey some vital message. Odin wanted it to feel like it was a positive afterlife-wisdom thing dogs picked up on, like, _You did the best you could, Odin. It's nobody's fault that Polly died. She was supposed to. Like I was._ Odin wanted to respond, "Why does _anybody_ have to die?", and more than that he wanted for Darryl, through her scruffy pet Pete, to give him some impossible infinity-of-the-universe answer only a dead person would know. One that would not only _be_ an answer but one that would make him understand death and fate and the afterlife and pain, or whichever of them existed or that you felt in death.

"You with me, baby?"

"What?" Odin asked, only then realizing Molly had just spoken. She was still grinning, but more than that seeking something in his eyes, and worried.

"I was trying to grab your hand, and you were, like . . . blank. I dunno, it's weird. I want you with _me_." She clutched his off-hand to her breast.

"I wanna be there too," Odin said, completely honestly.

Molly laughed.

Sometimes he could say the most guyish thing that came to him but not even get in trouble. Sometimes he could do all of that, and simultaneously make Molly happy. Maybe there was a little misunderstanding involved, but so what, that would happen occasionally anyway, and at least like this it was controlled, if minimally, rather than completely uncontrolled and random. And assuming, as Odin did, that there was some magical total number of misunderstandings per day, this way would also sort of dummy-knock one of them out, and save some moment of perfect understanding in communication for when he really wanted or needed one—with something really important to him, or if something beyond-impossible happened again—e.g. Darryl's corpse re-animating and attacking . . . something—then not with that. He timed it very carefully.

"I'm sorry," Odin said. "I guess I just get like that sometimes. I thought I told you. I just spaced out."

"You didn't, sweetie." She took his spare hand in hers and pressed her lips to it quietly, which drove him a little crazy. A soft smooch sounded as she peeled off, but kept his hand. During that:

He said "sorry" softly, then . . . quiet. Molly looked engrossed in his eyes. He hoped she was "lost in them," something so wishy-washy and idealized and silly and faraway that you had to put it in quotes. He sta**red**—honestly looked—at her for a few seconds, and really saw her, like he didn't know her, and she looked back. "Kiss me," he told her, as sort of a request.

Molly smiled so widely he thought that if she kissed him she might accidentally swallow his whole face. She put her hands on his waist and leaned in close. Like she wanted her body's front to latch onto his. He let his hand drift onto her cheek. Lips met. Mouths opened. Tongues met. Soft wet heat. It felt like the seal their lips formed made them one person; or so Odin's heart seemed to say to his mind, out loud.

It might've been his distrust, his never-comfortable-to-commit-to-much instinct; but whatever it was, after a few seconds Odin panicked at how the kiss hadn't ended yet—wasn't ending. It felt like he was in some infinity-realm, some death, still and forever kissing Molly. Yet it seemed like something that he wouldn't panic at, conceptually, mentally. Pete was sitting. It wasn't windy. Nothing inspi**red** in Odin a sense of time, yet he had one. Massaging her tongue with his, stroke, strrrokkke, tilting his head, approaching a little differently, testing a slightly different rhythm, Odin couldn't push away this feeling that he should break the kiss, drop Pete's collar, and run until he passed out. He wouldn't stop to breathe, or even vomit if that came up. He was going to get _used to_ Molly, for her to abandon him; happily walk into a clearly-labeled trap. He'd rather leave it and refuse than get hurt, or scar**red**.

Molly wanted more—of him. One of her hands rest around his waist, rubbing, suggesting _Why don't I reach under your shirt? Let me have you_, telling him she liked what he was doing, and liked it a lot. One hand wande**red** to the back of his neck, the back of his head, then eased upward and wound itself in his hair. She swallowed without breaking the kiss, breathing through her nose like him, took a deep breath, and let her tongue slip and slide further into his mouth. That was what it felt like. He let the soft side of his tongue go further along the rough side of hers, then took a plunge downward and further in.

**11:40 am Friday, 13 April 2007**

"Hey, can we bring Pete in here?" Molly asked the manager, Alf**red**, whom she appea**red** to know.

"Uhh, I can't let'cha do that, honey. Sorry. I'm sure he's a good boy but no-can-do." With a huge, I-own-a-very-popular-ice-cream-parlor grin.

"Oh. That's okay, Alf**red** Molina!" Molly exclaimed, cheery, bouncy. And Odin had thought nobody else would think of that. Alf**red** laughed. Molly turned back to Odin. Odin didn't like the appraising look-over Alf**red **gave Molly's backside; it was far from innocent, though such an examination was kind of inherently . . . adult. It made Odin very uncomfortable. Pedo-alert. "_I _wanna do the work this time," Molly said, getting the teeny changepurse she'd carried in a hip pocket out and ready; Odin tried to put on hold the alert going off in his mind; Molly had to battle her tiny shorts a little to accomplish it. She leaned into him. That was the only time her shorts didn't look rather comfortable to Odin. (He still kind of loved them on her.) Then, they looked restrictive, in the way that tight hip-hugger low-rise denim jeans did.

"I have no problem with that," Odin said with a grin, lying a little, and glancing to check on Pete, trying to get his mind back to its center and reset a little, and wanting to get behind Molly and put his arms around her waist and hips and just hold her like that forever, or for-most-of-ever anyway. Pete saw something that Odin didn't down some street perpendicular to the shop's façade, and needle-nosed toward it. Huskies didn't have the "pointer" trait, but Odin seemed to know dogs quite well, or felt very familiar—whatever it was he couldn't put words to it—and he could tell Pete favo**red** that street just as clearly as if the dog had pointed at the area. "I guess Pete doesn't either," Odin added, accidentally voicing the thought without any review. Molly giggled. He took a second to notice what'd just happened, and then that Molly liked it. She was smiling and biting her lip and watching him. He recove**red** and said, "Big hug, okay? And I want you to kiss _me _first."

"Fine."

They did both. Odin watched her go. Pete tried to pull him away.

**11:41 am Friday, 13 April 2007**

While he was sitting on a bench outside the ice cream place, with Molly in his sight but not close by, something told Odin that this happy city noise wasn't right somehow. Younger and older kids playing, skate punks pretending not to be playing—seemingly normal—people talking, a city living and breathing comfortably, even with the occasional car's horn or alarm going off incessantly and apparently trying to inflict tinnitus on someone. Or maybe it just seemed too summery for The Seekers' "Georgy Girl" to be playing on a nearby stereo.

Pete all but needle-nosed at something again. Odin could tell. Pete was sniffing madly, then coughed once, then went back to sniffing madly and barked.

In all the time Odin had been with Pete, the dog had never barked. Like a wolf. Odin reflexively, acting from some kind of id-level, stood, tensed just a little to get ready, and looked where Pete was looking, with his free hand shooting to whe

-re his gun wasn't. An odd reaction to a dog's cue, even without considering the rest of the way he reacted. It wasn't as if he was used to having some KYDEX® (a registe**red** trademark of KYDEX, LLC., whose name is officially written in all-caps; and basically a brand-name thermoplastic material.) hip holster toward his back, just behind the hip, canted forward about 45 degrees for an effortless quick draw, but something in Odin's left hand's muscle memory said, _Yes you are_. Odin forced the breath out, micro-meditating, as if he hadn't just reached for a _gun_ or whatever, enacting some kind of mid-battle ritual that helped save energy.

Odin and Pete were looking down a street parallel to the ice cream parlor's on the other side of the teeny park, about 40 yards away. Someone in that street—walking in Odin's direction, but turned away from him—was walking with their arms in front of them like Frankenstein. Err, Frankenstein's monster. Like Darryl, when she was "violent," whatever it really meant bio-physiologically or . . . The person's mouth was open—_her_ mouth was open—and she was a plainly-dressed teen in white-tan Capris, a purple sleeveless shirt and ugly Reebok running shoes. She didn't look like the type to normally walk with her arms out and her mouth open as if to devour someone, either. There was also a certain twitch to her walk—to her eyes, too, Odin noticed—that was all wrong. "Uncanny valley" wrong, like it was something _other_, trying to trick him into thinking it was human, but not trying very hard.

Odin heard two cops running toward Mary Shelley from outside his field of vision well before he saw them. Well before Pete's head twitched and looked their way. Pete looked around a lot, but soon back to the girl. There was a thud somewhere near that echoed loudly. The girl left his sight . . .

The police presence in town was noticeable enough to suggest they knew something was up, just as Odin and Pete did. And that they had known something perverse and horrible was happening.

_For how long?_

. . . Odin watched them near the zombie-girl for a few seconds, fixated on the periphery of it all.

It was Pete who taught Odin not to do it again. Pete looked behind them, at the ice cream parlor, before Odin did; before he heard the scream and the gunshot.

Odin scratched and rubbed and petted at Pete's head, and looked behind him. The parlor door had been wide-open earlier. Now it was closed. Odin couldn't see anyone moving inside in the first floor. On the second floor, he was pretty sure, saw a muzzle flash and heard a gunshot; a loud but nullified pop-bang, it carried but sounded powerless from where Odin was, yet dangerous and violent up where it came from. He instantly recognized the resonance of a .45-inch Automatic Colt Pistol round, powerful and loud but slow, one of the most widely-used pistol cartridges in the world since it'd been created to knock people down, e.g., before it, the way drugged-up Moro tribesmen wouldn't give way to US Army soldiers' .38 Long Colt bullets during the Philippine-American War; and finally popularized by a pistol, the Colt's [ ad? part of / official name then?: "Patent Firearms" ? ] Manufacturing Company's Government Model 1911. By Odin's time, it had come and gone so much that basically every firearms company had some equivalent or legacy-version of it. The gunshot could've meant anything but Odin was just certain that he knew what this one meant; exactly what it meant: _Somebody put a loaded gun, with a round in the chamber, in their mouth, pointing it up and tilting it back to make sure it hits brain, then pulled the trigger until it broke—fi**red**. And when that happened . . ._

It could've meant anything—and considering its already strange context, probably meant something entirely different from what Odin thought it did, even with all his certainty. Human memory was _infinitely_ fallible; maybe he'd just mis-remembe**red** the sound of .45 ACP, like considering some of his other recent memory snafus, and it was merely someone boarding up their windows and doors with a hammer and nails, before duct-taping the cracks in all those openings' leftover edges (since the _duct-tape_ would just _certainly_ save them, from . . . whatever, if the boarded-up entrances & exits didn't). Maybe it really was suicide; But maybe somebody'd just had that kind of day. Most of the stores around there, such as the ice cream parlor, had a few floors of apartments, or tenements or whatever they were called, above them. Some downtown zoning thing, or just income for the stores. People who had nothing to do with the city, or the ice cream parlor, or whichever other thing nearby. Maybe they had a long trip to work. Maybe whatever this event in the city was—_Is?_, wonde**red** Odin—it was somewhat likely that many of the people who lived in those apartments knew nothing of what was going on here.

Before Odin could move, four unformed cops rushed into the parlor's façade. He didn't even know where they came from. A group of confident, authoritative people with that much blue on—plus stiff black utility belts that must've weighed 20 pounds for all the gear they carried—looked really reassuring and authoritative and intimidating, more so together. They breached the building, storming in. Gunshots. That wasn't reassuring, or anything else good.

An air raid siren sounded, whirring and screaming, blowing all of everything apart for how unpleasant it felt. Odin could hear a few more in different directions, like it was a city system. They didn't fall into sync together, or maybe just weren't synced, generally. He couldn't believe they were run by hand, though that's what it sounded like. One blaring siren tower was very near, and Pete hated it even more than Odin did. Odin put his hands over Pete's ears. He could still hear that "Georgy Girl" song playing on some nearby, unseen stereo.

"Pete," Odin began, kneeling in front of the dog and sincerely talking to it—him. "I want you to stay with me, but if you don't . . . " He shrugged. "That's up to you." He unlatched the leash—spring-operated, with about 15 yards of lead inside that Odin could easily halt with his thumb—and tossed it by the bench. "Whatever happens, if you're with me, I'll try to keep you safe. Don't get hurt. But . . . you're free now." Odin was thinking about something in his wallet, but even as he was, and as he unlatched Pete, he couldn't help but hear himself thinking, narrating, examining himself: _I just gave this—what, solipsism?—to a dog. I can tell just from my own feelings that I fully believe that dogs, any animals really, are nothing __**less**__ than humans, and are basically equal to them as beings, but as idealistic or maybe slightly naïve as that might be, I seem to still be not-dumb-enough to realize that dogs don't actually understand—certainly don't speak, or appreciate short monologues in—English. And yet, I just said all these things to a dog. Explained myself. Sha**red** part of my soul. I must be such a jackass. _Odin had checked through his wallet so many times he'd memorized nearly everything in it. He was a board member of _PeTA _(its name was stylized—written in italics and one dropped capital letter). He hadn't figu**red** out what a PETA was yet, but it seemed like kind of a big deal. It appea**red** to be to him.

Odin approached the ice cream parlor. The husky with odd eyes followed, resolute.

**11:43 am Friday, 13 April 2007**

"Stay back please, sir," said the cop at the parlor's entrance. Meaning trusted but not extremely competent. Sometimes it meant more than that: Bitch-boy. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He seemed alright; as in, well, _someone_ has to guard the door. But, Odin could tell, he wasn't going to be moving himself. Not for someone who didn't outrank him. Poor guy.

"Let me through, please," said Odin, not slowing down, almost forgetting the "please," and too in a rush to water down the violence in his voice. The cop tensed, a hand easing toward his belt. Not unreasonable. Odin recognized the distinctive longish, ribbed pistol-grip of an Austrian, designed-from-the-ground-up for function and capability rather than looks, dull black, blocky Glock pistol.

"I can't do that, sir. You're gonna have to leave," said the officer, unaffected—which was good—and condescending—not good. Odin didn't like that.—but not actually rude.

Then Odin was more or less _on _the cop. On, through, past, done with. He didn't realize he could move quite so fast. But he did. The cop, judging by his wide-open, terrified-for-life eyes, and quiet gasp, didn't expect that either, and he'd put up a fight, but he appea**red** to know what came next.

The cop clawed briefly and in vain, panicking, mostly at Odin's arms, like to spin around then handcuff him. But Odin's arms weren't really part of him; weren't responsible for their actions; and entirely disagreed with anyone's presuming authority. He wasn't sure if that meant over him or civilians in general. Especially not when they were in some place the entirety of whose civilization appea**red** to be falling—diminishing—failing. Odin felt just intuitively, knowing that intuition could be very much wrong but feeling certain that it had something to do with the city's hospital, with "getting violent;" with infectious disease and transmission and communication. And the reason or reasons for the guy's false authority didn't make a difference anymore, by then. He couldn't think. Would take too long. But . . . controlling the head was controlling the body:

Odin went for his head.

Something less than a second and two twists later—one insistent, the next brutal; then one sickening dull pop—the building's entranceway was open. Odin seve**red** a man's spine without giving it or him a second thought. He was thinking far ahead then, about where to go after and what to do and how bad the place's upstairs might be, rather than about his immediate actions, but if he'd been thinking about those, it would've been of nothing but Molly: making sure she wasn't hurt, somehow healing her any and every wound and little cut, and getting her someplace safe or saf_er_. Some domineering man had gotten between Odin and Molly; he was gone now.

But Odin quickly forgot that moment. It had been mostly muscle memory and training, and brutality. He went by the officer's body later and didn't recognize its crumpled mass; no blood; as if his memory was deliberately wiped. He never realized it, but his own mind had produced a false memory of entering the building without being accosted. The mind abhors a vacuum.

The cop's sidearm, a full-size self-loading semiautomatic pistol—a .40 S&W-caliber Glock 22 with a 15-round magazine—and a collapsible baton were in Odin's hands—_Equipped_. The two spare magazines for the firearm were part of the package. Just _ready_. He checked the gun—_ready to rock_, he heard someone else's voice say, in the back of his mind—before he knew it.

There were two ways out of the parlor: a door to an alley behind it and a staircase leading up.

Odin sensed Pete just behind him, then looked and saw. He asked the mutt, "Where'd Molly go?"

Pete appea**red** to favor the stairs.

They were climbing the stairwell. Neither bothe**red** notice the various bloody, mangled corpses peppering the ground-level floor of the ice cream parlor.

The staircase smelled and sounded creepy. It was cramped and tiny and awful and probably violated every fire code there'd ever been. Odin kept feeling, deeply and horribly, like its walls would keep getting tighter, then get even tighter and closer together and narrower by the top that he'd get stuck, at which point it the walls and ceiling and stairs would animate, and gain agency somehow, and crush him to death, quickly, but not so quickly that he wouldn't have time dread death and feel the pain. Minutes, maybe. One person would be able to climb the stairs fine if they were alone but never two. The stairs were also steep, which in the most objective way he could manage, Odin guessed was probably their worst aspect. If a zombie fell on Odin from the top and he couldn't get a grip they'd probably both fall, tumble intractably and break their necks, even though he was in sort of a Weaver pistol shooting stance—bent slightly, but firm, to absorb recoil, maintain control, rotate like a turret, and stay mobile. A little like a spring—and was in a decent position to manage things. Like the staircase would just deny that. The staircase smelled disconcertingly old in the way of something decomposing, as opposed to a good kind of old like a used bookstore. It made Odin uncomfortable, almost as much as the feeling he'd be killed. And the feeling of dread terror was loud, screaming at Odin to stay back; that every additional step was one less that he'd be able to retreat as he committed himself more to going past the threshold at the top.

Odin heard a hungry moan, but one without the kind of nuance that life imparted upon a voice, just like the one he'd heard from Darryl before, coming from the top of the stairs, to the left. It'd heard him. He couldn't tell what the layout would like be up there. He got the impression from lighting that there would be another flight of stairs and rooms on the left and a closet on the right—the stairs were in the back of the parlor.

Odin spread his legs a little more, trying to maintain about shoulder-width, swapping which hand the gun was in . . . it going with his right so he could lean around the corner. He was clearing left before right because he felt like the danger would come from the left first, and he didn't have enough space to do much pie-cutting—checking around corners at nearly identically-sized intervals, as opposed to running in and looking around after.

"You first, Pete. Don't bite anybody." Odin looked to him and nodded, gesturing forward a little with his head.

Pete dashed up. Nothing grabbed at him, but after he checked it out—Odin came up then—Pete ruffled his veritable feathers at something on the left. The husky's short, though still thick for the area's temperate weather, summer-fur-coat stood on end; especially at his sharp, wide, violent-looking, undernourished, arched front shoulders, and down a little into his mid-back. He bent down a little at the front, and his haunches went up a little—to vault into the air, and push off the ground with his front feet, and tear and rip and kill. He wasn't just spooked, as if by some ghost noise. He'd seen a threat. It was there. He was watching it. But Pete didn't bark. All Odin needed to see was him take the attack posture, which he saw.

A zombie in a plaid, long-sleeved button-up blouse and ugly thick-looking jeans, workboots. It used to be a bald, craggly construction worker, but now it was a one-eyed, awfully bloody construction worker with one arm, and only a few fingers left on the one hand it did have.

Odin didn't have to think to aim, but if he had thought about it, internally he would've said something like: "Keep finger off trigger. Face target. Only ever point weapon pointed _down_range and _away_ from anyone else. Bring weapon up and eventually into both hands, primary supported by secondary. Select with care and _make god damn fucking sure_ of target before proceeding, because something might die, and that your finger is still well _off_ of the trigger. Align gunsights, meaning with this particular Glock 22: three white dots in a row. Deactivate safeties (where applicable; and it wasn't here.). **Red**uce gun-aim movement speed. When on target and about to fire, hold steady. Never get lazy or careless. Focus on front sight. Do not lock arms; aim, but let your arms stay a little loose. Don't fight the recoil; It will win. It has more and explosive energy, kinetic and potential, than you could ever have. Squeeze trigger inward, straight back, but do not jerk, as if that'll make it happen sooner or something; let it happen; don't mind the weight of trigger-pull. You can handle it.—Don't try to outthink the machine.—Continue until trigger breaks, and striker hits primer, on the bullet. Pull trigger. Pull trigger."

Odin fi**red**, actually a quick two pulls of the trigger nearly at once: An experienced and sure double-tap, two bullets in one head. Except against armo**red** targets more or less a proven method—but against zombies, very proven.

Then somehow Odin felt like, despite being shot twice, the thing wouldn't die. Maybe he watched too much overstated, over the top, on the nose anime. It took him a moment to that it out, but it still went quickly. A small objective increment of time passed, but Odin was subjective, and couldn't hope imagine the real length anyway. He raised the officer's weapon—But it was his now.—and re-oriented it relative the target, which had moved, being shot in the head twice and all. He was very familiar with firearms. He checked and used his sights, though at such a minuscule range didn't need to. He fi**red** once more.

When Odin added the third shot, it became a triple-tap, aka Mozambique Drill, a professional practice and tactic, which was supposed to be two rounds to the sternum, then one more in the forehead/between the eyes. Three shots to the face and head, one a little higher than the others, probably qualified though.

The zombie dropped as quick as the world's physics and gravity allowed, which was considerably. Odin had reacted to seeing it so quickly and efficiently it never even got to moan. So quick at something like that, Odin was a dream at a short-duration left-turn traffic light.

"Odin!"

That was Molly.

Which wouldn't explain why, in his mind, she'd hear a gunshot and assume Odin, but he was so worried she might've been bitten, or already dead, that he didn't care why she might make such a connection, or how.

Odin was wrong about the next stairwell: it was behind him. A coat rack and a desk and what looked like a door to a closet (the room's space seemed to add up that way) were too. In front were two doorways, both numbe**red **with cheap, trying-to-look-vintage gold plates under the numbers: **01** and **02**. Molly would be in **02 **if Odin's ears were right.

Pete was waiting for Odin, but Pete _really _wanted to just _go _already, and what Pete wanted to move to happened to also be door number **02**.

**01'**s door was open. No noise came from it. Pete looked inside, but was otherwise uninterested in it. It was dark, save one blade of light that looked like it might be coming from a joining door to **02** or something. Odin decided to trust the mutt on this.

Odin kept consciously aware of the surroundings, and moved to the room. His instincts said nobody else was in the building.

He heard feet shuffling inside of it, and not like people's feet would, but like zombies'. The rhythm was just all wrong, placement and lift and ankles and toes too, like the—fact?—that their feet and legs were even moving them was at best random and coincidental. A living person could replicate that, but it would have to be deliberate and practiced and purposeful, whereas this just sounded the way it probably should sound if something asking for a certain suspension of disbelief had revived and enlivened a corpse, then set it to walking, then let it get stuck someplace where it didn't see anything interesting. So it was just shuffling around, not really knowing what to do. At the door, Odin checked the room's skinny, rustic metal handle, with what felt like some kind of a leaf's engraving lending texture to the palm of the knob (it was too dark to see the pattern, whatever it was), which was locked. _If there are zombies, inside the room, who would've been there to lock this door, and why?_ he demanded tumultuously of . . . whomever was responsible for such callous deliberate obstruction. Odin also heard a constant, repetitive fists-banging-on-wood noise. The fists didn't seem to mind the pain that would come from that. It changed a few times, usually within each second, and at random, like several different people, or more likely ex-people, were doing it.

"Don't bite any zombies," Odin said to and slightly asked of Pete. Pete looked up to him, then back at the door eagerly.

Careful not to over-commit, Odin kicked the door in. He kicked hard. Perhaps due to luck—fortune of chance—it worked. Pete rushed past him, into the room with what to Odin looked like reckless disregard for whether he might cut his paws on splinters, or catch _the crazy_ from that, or infected blood that would get in through the cuts, perhaps because he didn't know better. It just seemed like the dog would or should know to consider environmental hazards, but then again Odin genuinely was an animal lover and wanted any animal to catch that virus / disease / bacterial infection / whatever even less than he would "want" a human to catch it; differentiation between animals and humans an exception in such instance simply because no animal apart from Homo sapiens had created the strain of disease—or whatever it was exactly—that made zombies of the living and reanimated the dead. But maybe Pete wouldn't consider the environment, or didn't, or couldn't. Pete had, although it ange**red** Odin, known Molly for longer than him. Maybe he felt like he had to keep her safe. Odin would've made the same error about environmental hazards, but the dog beat him to it.

To the front, nothing but a desk, some furniture, and a person sitting at the desk whose brain had been birthed partially out the back of their head, explosively, mostly onto the floor behind them, but a few specks of it, and bright white skull, and some ragged torn scalp and dark hair hit the wall, too. Their head was intact, but there was this one large section of it missing, and there were a lot of layers to human life, just about all of them spread and sprayed open and about the room and one wall for Odin's inspection. The dead person was leaning back in their chair and the scene looked peaceful from behind, because the way light came in the room ensconced the back of their head in shadow. Odin didn't want to see it head-on. It would be less scary—more reassuring, less alien, less . . . something—that way, but more just unpleasant and outright, and it seemed sort of disrespectful to the peace or end or resolution the person had been seeking. Odin couldn't figure out any way to word it, he just didn't want to take it from them. Sort of like when people closed the eyes of their dead. Dignity.

To the right, two doors. One was closed. The other led to a bedroom, or so Odin's instincts said. It was in there that Odin had heard zombies shuffling. He'd thought they were closer. Molly's voice came from somewhere to the right—closet?

Pete didn't seem consider the question. Once the husky decided—as far as Odin could tell—that there was nothing of interest in the main room, not even that body and the dots on the floor, a few foully acrid-smelling, stubby, small-pistol bullet shell casings, he hopped into a trot for the bedroom.

Pete was quick.

Odin hadn't made anything like such a decision to move on. He had an urge to look around. Pete finished first and moved on, and at that Odin felt something slight but long and dense reach inside him and squeeze, making him ditch his itching curiosity and need to explore the room, and follow the dog instead because it felt like if he let the dog go first it would get hurt somehow, or specifically worse, like some zombie was perched perfectly to catch the dog and bite and tear and rip its squirming howling form apart, then devour and revel in it.

Odin was quicker.

Pete was jealous.

Before he could say as much as "I won, bitch!" a zombie was on him. It must've been examining the left side of the bedroom, facing the street, for . . . whatever a zombie would examine any thing for, heard the door bust in and headed that way. Odin also noticed that to the right of the doorway and about halfway into the room—where Odin couldn't see from the main room—was a gang of about five zombies, banging on a closed door. A closed door that looked like it wouldn't take much more of a beating before it broke down.

Odin felt this need to get outside. It was so pretty outside. It had that flower smell. Being close to a woman.

Molly.

Odin's body took care of the zombie, but left Odin to take care of the other five-ish of them in the room. He'd realize later that he'd looked away from the zombie, brought the gun up between their chests, partially to make sure the thing couldn't get closer, then fi**red **through where chin met neck, up through brain.

And so it occur**red** to Odin that it wasn't so bad to have a pistol in a situation like this. Shooting the—no, six—zombies by the door, each of them in the head, once, Odin thought about how, fighting anybody anywhere, he'd rather have a rifle than a pistol. A 6-pound 5.56x45mm NATO/.223 Remington Colt M4A1 state-of-the-art-ish assault rifle, a 11-pound 7.62x51mm NATO/.308 Winchester Springfield Armory M14 Vietnam-era dignified battle rifle, now conside**red** a designated marksman's rifle, and guaranteed man-stopper, a bolt-action .30-06 US Service Springfield M1903A4 WWII-era sniper rifle, whatever. Something that would definitely hit what he pointed it at further from him than 20 yards—the range at which most pistols' accuracy crapped out.

Shooting the zombies by the closet with a .40 Smith and Wesson-caliber Glock 22 pistol, though, made Odin realize that it wasn't so bad to have that kind of gun. The most common cartridge in a modern American rifle, the 5.56x45mm NATO (.223 in general and civilian American parlance), could zip through a person like a razor through paper. Its weakness was that the bullet could zip through a person like a razor through paper. It was small and narrow and very fast. It would go through so fast and cleanly they might not even feel it. Though hopefully they would, and the not-even-feeling-it didn't happen all that often. Odin got the unfortunate impression, and was objectively pretty sure anyway, that these—any—zombies wouldn't much mind pain, if they felt experienced it at all. Poor things. Perhaps it was his liking horror b-movies that told him, or instinct. Regardless, shooting them in the head yielded results. If he shot somebody with a 5.56x45mm at this kind of range—especially at point-blank, they-have-you-by-the-fucking-shoulders range—would mean the bullets might not have enough space to do what they wanted, and what the bullets wanted to do was, as hollowpoints, either fragment and sh**red** everything the fragments touched, like shrapnel; or tumble, meaning bounce off bones inside what they hit, among other things, put the demon in somebody and then leave. Unfortunately, being that close to a target, a 5.56x45mm round would do about as much damage as a needle going straight through somebody. Pinpricks—very loud ones. Time-consuming ones, too, like, "Odin could be shooting them uselessly, or he could be breaking their necks and saving Molly." Wasting any time seemed like wasting quite a lot somehow.

So he was glad to have a gun that shot .40-inch rounds. And a gun in general. They didn't have the kind of potential and kinetic energy 5.56x45mm rounds did, and, being less energetic, Odin's .40 S&W bullets would take the time to stick around, and scramble zombie-brains, which was exactly what Odin wanted them to do.

Judging by the small but thick showers of blood Odin's Glock 22 caused, though, none of the wounds he inflicted caused anything less than death in the people they hit.

When the zombies were all re-dead—six rounds and two or three seconds later—the closet area looked like somebody had just pou**red** and whipped around and dumped a bathtubfull of blood onto it.

"Molly?" said Odin, keeping his gun at the ready, mostly up, but not with his arms fully extended: basically in a depressed-pistol stance. Odin looked around, mainly to see if, as in the movies sometimes, any zombie torsos were crawling slowly and quietly toward his feet with John Williams _Jaws _theme as musical accompaniment, or as in other movies, maybe it was a walking one or whatever but otherwise the same short creep. Also, he figu**red**, there was a 96% or better chance that whenever he started paying attention to something else, or saw another human, or just whatever, at least one zombie but possibly more would just spontaneously-instantaneously generate, or spawn, about half a foot away from him: far enough not to be touching, but close enough that he was one lunge, between half of one and several seconds of screentime, from torturous painful death.

Pete was flapping around in a bloodcorner, apparently smelling a lot of different and terribly interesting things. "Don't lick that, Pete."

Pete looked back and up at Odin, caught **red**-handed in the headlights, as if he didn't know Odin was there, and/or gave a shit about the internal consistency or clearly-defined boundaries of the strongly acidic bitter-tasting bilious trite tripe of clichés. In French, the plural would just be "cliché," spelled the same, but that would look too much like an accident or oversight.

The door swung open and Molly closed the distance so fast Odin would've sworn she emerged from the doorway, then transported through some gap in space-time to a point directly in front of him. Kissing him. And didn't have to walk or move or do anything in-between.

"Odin! I'm so so so _sooo_ so fucking glad to see you, baby." She was hugging him and squeezing and pulling him bodily into her so hard that it was starting to hurt, her short but not scant fingernails digging into skin. He was surprised she'd been able to speak. Bodily, she hardly seemed human for all the fear and trembling and shaking. Traumatic stress. A pack of zombies must've come at the ice cream place, and she saw others killed, devou**red**, before they ran upstairs or something. All of them unarmed. Not even scrub brushes, or wooden rolling pins, or lamps with knives duct-taped to them, or anything else dumb but which could conceivably get the job done, made from materials available.

"I'm glad to see you too." Odin committed himself to just holding her. He took a breath and _gave_, more or less, leaning into Molly rather than standing just about rod-straight, and apparently not embracing her right, without even noticing, and wrapping himself around her, adjusting his chin and head against her shoulder and neck, letting his arms hold her, though carefully since there was a gun in one lf them. "Baby," he said softly. He wanted to say so much, but was nowhere near words and that was the best he could do. Then a wordless "hmm" of love and concern and horror and adoration and pride and more came out. Something similar came out of Molly, he heard, but felt even more. A longer, much less worried, reassu**red**, happy, loving, encouraged, and just returned noise. Her arms had gone up, and now sort of held his head and shoulders and neck on and to her, and hugged too. So his arms were toward her lower back. He locked the arm of his that had to hold onto and deal with the gun, the Glock, lower, and just kept it clear and safe. He used his other arm to try to say everything he couldn't, embodying it. Rubbed and stroked and hugged and soothed Molly, in the middle of her back between skinny and bony but soft and warm ridges of shoulder and ribcage and spinal column, exposed a little too much when all you could do was feel it. Without needing to think it he stayed north of her ass. After a while, it seemed like he wasn't doing enough, or couldn't, and he just leaned in and held Molly a little closer a little tighter, and stopped trying to dress it up. She'd stopped moving before then, except occasionally drawing the backs of a couple fingers up and down his head or playing with his hair a little.

He didn't care how long it might take.

She held on for a second more: some amount of minutes, wrapped up in a few seconds. But it was enough. "Fuckin' . . . " Molly began. She looked up, maybe checking for a little reassurance or strength from him, the way he'd looked to her for it before. Her eyes widened, and dilated in the dark, looking huge. Her eyes seemed a little bit anime-big sometimes anyway but they surely did them. She continued, "That was . . . scary," struggling with it, and saying it quietly just for him. "But for the record I'm not being a sca**red** girl." She poked him in the chest as she said the last few words, trying to drive it into his memory.

"I don't believe in records," Odin said. She got the joke just _so much more_ than he could've imagined, if she tried to explain quite how well she got it or how extremely funny and perfect it was, she'd have to go on for hours just to get to a real explanation, mainly for context. So she wouldn't try. Maybe later. Molly laughed _hard_, out loud, then ducked her head into his chest and shoulder and kept laughing. After a pause Odin continued, "No. You're just, like, a spring uncoiling, and . . . Anyway that closet looks really small."

As six other people filed out of it. Two of the cops Odin watched clearing the place earlier; one very young, blonde and skinny store-employee-looking girl; and two people who looked like they never wanted to be that close again—a middle-aged man in a _Dalton Daily_—local newspaper—t-shirt and black, loud nylon pants, running shoes; and a lawyer-looking woman in a slightly gaudy but mostly tasteful, nice dark suit with a skirt and nylons and conservative-business high heels. Not advertising or PR-business, but business.

One of the cops looked at the gun in Odin's hand, then him, then apparently Molly's ass. Odin didn't like it, but he was a man, and understood that, as a man, the other man just had to do that. He didn't linger. Odin did his best to make a note to self: _Stop staring at ass (females')_.

Pete was checking everyone out, darting from one to another and sometimes back between them, unabashed.

To Odin, the cop asked, "Who the fuck're you?", also stating something different, physically: with his own gun in his hand, like he was ready to use it. Which, Odin already saw, was untrue.

Odin didn't let the ungrateful presumed anger bug him. Maybe it was understood well enough that they'd all still be cowering in a tiny enclosed space if not for himself. If he really wanted to he could've fucked Molly right there. He owned them all that much. Had control and power, and not even because he had weapons on him. He was just that confident, and assu**red**, and strong; maybe a little aggressive. Yet inc**red**ibly understated, and not presumptuous or brazen or something. The group gave itself to him. Even "bold" suggested a little much. Alpha male. And about Molly, even ignoring the groupthink and dynamics clearly going on and having a lot to do with it: He had her. He loved her. She loved him. Nothing else matte**red**. That and he wanted to keep her safe.

Odin simply said, "I'm the guy who keeps his head. You must be the other guy."

Molly and everybody but the cops laughed. Well, the other cop did too. It was only the one guy who didn't. His eyes fla**red**. Odin was pretty sure the husky Pete laughed too. Odin wonde**red** what kind of spectacle the non-laughing cop had made of himself in the closet, or even before then.

Odin looked to Molly and prodded a little, at the cop. He wasn't sure why. He fake-whispe**red** like he was trying to talk behind the guy's back to "politely" not insult him to his face. Which was pretty much why he picked that kind of a joke. To try it, anyway. It might sound harsh, or too much. Odin said, "Did it smell like smashed ego in the closet at all?"

"Depends on how you define that, but if you mean 'like pee,' yeah," Molly said. She went from holding him, taking deep breaths, to looking at the cops, then back to him. She'd been disappointed with them too, apparently. Odin hadn't expected her to go as far as saying the guy'd peed his pants, or whatever. Use of the word "pee" felt odd somehow.

"Stop it, okay?" said the cop, "I was just sca**red**. Those things're . . . " he trailed off. Zombies really did bother the man.

"I was too," the other cop admitted to Odin, in defense of his friend.

"Do you either of you know what 'protect and serve' means?" Odin counte**red**. He didn't emphasize any part of it. He wasn't trying to make it sting, apart from the question being relevant, which he felt was bad enough an insult. It might've been wrong. But if it wasn't, Odin worried he'd bitten too deep.

Odin saw what might've been a tear in the first cop's eye, before he looked away. Maybe Odin had gone too far. Maybe he was just right, at some kind of base level. He felt guilty, regardless.

Molly whispe**red** "Don't apologize to them" to Odin, genuinely quietly, just for him. Perhaps he had missed more of what those two did wrong than even he thought.

Odin pulled back a little. "You can see that?" He tried to imply "in my eyes"—that he'd been about to apologize.

"Yeah," Molly said. "And don't. You're right." She was showing some anger. She normally never did. Something had gotten to her. He needed to go over the whole thing with her, though he had wanted to anyway.

"Come on," Odin said, quietly, and only to Molly. "Pete! Let's go!"

The husky perked up.

Odin was out in the hall, having taken the suicide's gun—a Beretta Cougar 8045F—and one extra loaded magazine for it stashed in the desk—and given the Glock 22 with its two extra magazines to Molly—before he realized that everybody from the closet, save the two cops, was following him.

Odin was holding the Cougar because its muzzle and . . . most of the rest of it were bloody from the life it ended. He'd used some water and paper towels but it was still sticky, be fouled. He didn't know what a constant reminder self-mutilation would do to Molly, not after this morning, but he knew he'd be fine with it. He thought about how he was a nice guy for doing that because the Cougar's grip was positively slimy. But that was about it. He didn't even have time to think about the 8045's Cat Pack—a special edition box thing that came with a Beretta lapel pin (because who _didn't_ want one of those), one pair of extra grips for the gun, and . . . well, there were these two ominous **red** and white sort of chevron-sectional vaguely umbrella-looking symbols with rotational symmetry on the lapel pins, and grips, where there should've been Beretta logo-symbols. Maybe it was some obscure American thing, or a reference to an Ancient Roman thing, or some bizarre conspiracy-belief hatched from excessive pattern-seeking behavior, fantasy-prone personality, conspiracy thinking, of course, and pareidolia.

"What are you people doing?" Odin asked. Gruff, maybe, but he wasn't going to be nice. Not when Molly and Pete weren't definitely safe. And depending on how bad the zombie stuff was . . . Nice didn't apply. Survival did.

"We're coming with you," said the business ~ lawyer.

"Don't talk to me like you have influence over me," said Odin, and in the lawyer's personal perspective oddly casually: almost inconsequential, sort of just saying words more than ordering, and definitely rather than trying to be all cool or young and defensive and passionate about it all. Which confused her a little but which to her was a very welcome break from how most kids behaved, especially around each other.

"Okay."

"You . . . shouldn't be with me," Odin said. "But I'll bring you to the police station if you want."

"Why shouldn't we be with you?" Store Employee asked.

"You'd be safer with them."

**11:49 am Friday, 13 April 2007**

It looked exactly the same outside as it did before. Or so thought Odin.

Before Molly grabbed onto his shoulder.

"I feel sick," she said. "It smells _fucking_ awful in here."

Which it did, on the first floor of the ice cream parlor. There were at least six bodies in there, bloodier than a '70s Italian zombie film, smellier than a dumpsterfull of old fruit and banana peels on a hot day. He enjoyed the way Molly swore differently from normal. The place's discomforts didn't faze Odin, though he wasn't sure what that said about him. But he didn't think about that, either. He especially didn't want to vomit now, and double-especially didn't want to get it on Molly somehow, for any reason. He led Molly out with a hand on her waist. She felt hot. There was a sweat stain on the back of her shirt, although it wasn't clearly visible. Odin could see it because he'd felt it, and already knew where it was. She needed air bereft of the undead stench.

Rough road. Twice she tried to stop, to vomit, cough, then vomit some more. But Odin didn't let her stop—they needed to get _out_. He led her by the arm, and quickly getting ahold of her hair with his other hand. Down, she'd spray all over it when she threw up.

He wasn't sure how difficult vomit would be to get out of hair. He couldn't imagine how it would work out exactly in terms of acidity and PH levels and all that. But Molly's **red** hair was so beautiful and great and taken care of that he felt like vomit would be impossible to get or wash out of it. So he'd try to avoid that.

She did, outside, when Odin let her stop. He held her as if to say, reassuringly, softly, "Let it out. You'll be okay." The other parlor-folks gathe**red** around them. Odin made sure to stand between Molly and everybody else, but they'd still see something if they looked. He hoped Molly wouldn't feel it that way, though; would be more comfortable. Humans can't really tell when they're being looked at, says all quality research done into it—but most of them outright reject such an indication or conclusion outright because they just _know_ otherwise, perhaps even by intuition. One thing everyone generally accepts, though, is that once someone feels like they're being watched, it's impossible to convince them otherwise. After her initial burst he relaxed a little, made sure he had all of her hair out of the way, rubbed her very sweaty back from under her shirt. She thanked him for "doing that" and leaned into him even more, which he hadn't been expecting. He nearly lost her, with his balance thrown off. But by chance he didn't. He hoped she couldn't tell he'd almost let them both fall because he hadn't been ready enough.

"Is she okay?" one of the cops asked.

"No," Odin said. For some reason he didn't lie. He tried to hold back on the sarcasm as much as he could, but he also wanted to slap the shit out of both of the cops. Holding back from that already, he could only keep his tone so flat.

"Sorry," the cop said.

At trying not to be sarcastic, perhaps he failed. Or perhaps he didn't care.

**11:57 am Friday, 13 April 2007**

The city's falling apart produced a very large volume of sound, but it was so hard to single certain things out—a scream; a blast of gunshots like zombies had busted through a door into a room, then ate its screaming, shooting and struggling occupants alive; a car exploding someplace; a few cars bursting someplace else; an entire building's-worth of people dying for whatever reason—that Odin kind of couldn't figure out what every noise was. What really got him was, after a few seconds, the screams he kept hearing. They didn't sound anything like Hollywood stock-sound effect screams. They had something real in them like they were completely inadvertent, and raw, and to Odin, they felt like the hopeless cries of people he knew and loved.

_Who are my parents? Where are they?_

Odin was shaking hands with everybody. A few of them even shook hands with Molly, too. The store-employee girl even shook hands with and kissed Pete. "Thanks for doing this," she said, to Odin, while not quite looking him in the eye.

"Yeah, we really appreciate it," Alf**red** said.

"It's too bad we can't go with you," Daily Dalton said, which Odin recognized as a way to ask if they could, or could get him to reconsider, which to Odin was annoyingly passive-aggressive.

The lawyer and the cops thanked him too. He bid them all adieu and said they were welcome.

That happened by an elaborate group of anti-protest barricades by the police station. He saw it with Molly, walking through the downtown section of Dalton, but not nearly from this close. Near the station, cops had parked a line of squad cars together, and they had an anti-riot fence set up beyond that. Further out they had various cement partitions set up like a level in _Gears of War_—a shooting game in which players have to take cover between anything that happens to be waist-high or taller. Odin reflected: _It'd be a great multiplayer map, thinking about it_.

The station would be too, especially for snipers. There were a few obvious spots, but any good sniper would be able to find someplace wherein they'd be impossible to spot. There were three floors of decent hiding spots on the new-as-old pale yellow-brown brick building. What really distinguished the station from the buildings around it was a thick layer of something blue just under the edge of the roof. On the front side, the blue proclaimed "**DALTON POLICE**" in perfectly-contrasting white that set the tone for the whole building—strong, but more or less modest, and reassuring. The white of "**DALTON POLICE**" was so pure that Odin wonde**red** how it could be or get that way in Dalton. Most nearby buildings looked aged, stained, depressed, gray, given up on.

At the same time, one of the gate guards, in partial riot gear namely wearing helmets with tough plastic face shields—this on the next-to outmost layer of the barricades—said "You're not coming?"

Odin had to ask the man to repeat himself. He did.

"Sorry," Odin said. "I hate doing that, but my hearing's kinda buggy."

"It's okay," the cop said, with a smile. It looked contradictory, in a way. The cop and his partner in riot gear—also including heavy armo**red** ballistic vests, knee and elbow pads—looked inhuman, incapable of experiencing emotions, to say nothing of their capability for having compassion. "The way those two twerps described it you must'a had a lotta trigger time."

"Maybe I have," Odin said, as if seriously teasing a little . . . yet being obvious about it. He probably had practiced a lot. The two guns Odin had held since . . . as far back as he could remember . . . had felt way too familiar in his hands for him to not have fi**red** guns before. A lot.

The cop laughed.

"Seriously—you're really more than welcome in the station. We have a setup for people in the gym, and if you're good you could actually help us out a lot."

"There's a gym?"

"Yeah, man. The place used to be a school. A couple years ago the city bought it so they could have a station in this part'a the city limits or something."

"Were _you_ protectin' and servin' then too?" Odin asked.

With a grin, the cop said, "Yeah. I've been in-uniform since my 20s. I'm . . . older now."

Everybody smiled. Odin glanced at Pete—really glancing at Molly. She seemed okay with the idea of talking to the gate guard. Going further. She glanced back at him and smiled.

"What was the last one like? Past maybe 'too small.'"

Molly snaked a hand across Odin's shoulders and rubbed at his back slowly, scratching occasionally.

"Well . . . it was a little like that," the cop said. His nametag was under his armor somewhere. Odin had looked at the guy's gear expecting to find it somewhere he'd already looked more than once since they met in the last minute or two. Smiles. "Our armory was, like, part of the locker room, the garage was . . . shit . . . You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I kinda do. And . . . the new one's nice?"

Odin switched which hand Pete's leash was in, and upon freeing an arm he could do it with, put his arm around Molly's waist. Which felt great. She leaned closer, melting into him, beginning what he kind of wished was a permanent fusion process.

"_Yeah _it is. It was expensive. They ended up having to build on a lot and tear down some of the school anyway, and then all the renovation up to code stuff cost even more. I didn't realize it was that expensive to do, but I guess that explains why it doesn't happen that much downtown. People doing something with old buildings I mean."

Odin asked, "But you kept the gym?"

"Yeah. And as just a community thing it's worth it. It has kind of a nice vintage appeal. Once we got all the graffiti off, I mean."

Odin grinned. He had this feeling like, while not here, he'd been involved in a lot of graffiti-ing himself. "Yeah. Dalton schools get that," Odin said. Odin knew a little about the graffiti epidemic in Dalton public schools. It had been an issue in the last election cycle . . . whenever that was. He had no idea how long it had been. The cop laughed.

He'd thought to some moments ago. For some reason, Odin decided right then to flick a finger on a hip-strap of Molly's underwear, which he'd discove**red** accidentally, running a finger along the top of her shorts. Then he went back to grazing the small of her back with his knuckles, but over the top of her shirt—not with his hand under it, or just pushing the fabric up to expose the area. Molly giggled and leaned into him, her body urging Odin, "Touch me more." Which he thought was a very dangerous dare.

"What's the gym like? I mean I remember going to one school around here a long time ago, and they had something like that . . . "

Odin trailed off because he did not remember going to a school around there a long time ago. The cop took over for him. Odin had looked like he was having trouble remembering dates, or something like that. The cop assumed Odin had done service in the US armed forces, overseas somewhere, and was happy to color in some gaps in Odin's memory of where he grew up. Odin really was beginning to think he'd grown up around there somewhere.

"Well, different people like different things," the cop said. "James here" (gesturing to his partner, at the gate) "likes how the lightbulbs always seem to be a little too old to light it enough. And it's a little sepia-toned and warm and all that. Just light-wise. _I_ like how you get to the locker rooms under the gym."

"How's that?" Molly asked, sounding genuinely interested. Odin dragged a couple of fingers up the ridge in the middle of her back, firmly. She didn't move much visibly but her body reacted to him rather a lot. He liked that. Molly seemed to think he was going too far, in the open—as in, getting a little excited. Odin liked that too, yet knew he didn't have any interest in having sex with her in front of other people. He wasn't sure what that meant, really. Maybe he just got a thrill by turning her on. Felt like a man.

"There are two stairwells on the one side of the court," the cop said. "Fenced-off. They just sorta . . . descend into blackness. That's where the locker rooms are. It's a little old-timey, but it's a space-saver to have it stacked that way. Most of the police-only stuff is aboveground or in the rebuilt sections, so not having to use up more space for that helps."

Odin lost track a little during what the cop said. He mentally stepped back a little to remember all the stuff that made sense, or stuff he'd been interested in. "I've never seen anything like that," Odin said. "Nowhere else." _I shouldn't've said that! Fuck! Now he knows I'm just being nice and interested, or . . . I just sound stupid._

"Yeah," the cop said. Then with a smile, "You should really go reminisce with your girlfriend in there."

Odin smiled and said, "Dammit, man, you know how I feel about that," as if he'd known the cop a long time. He and both of the two cops giggled at it for some reason.

"Seriously? It'd be no problem. I'll check you in, if you want."

"I really appreciate that, but it just . . . feels wrong."

"I know what you mean," the cop said. Something deep behind his eye told Odin the cop knew exactly what was bothering Odin, and that the cop was curious just how it was. "I understand how you feel, though. And I respect your choice." The cop stuck his hand out.

"What's your name? Before we go our separate ways." The cop made to correct Odin, who caught himself and beat the cop to it: "Before I go mine, I mean."

The cop smiled. "I'm Karl." Karl pointed to the guy he'd called James: "And that's James." Odin had felt pretty nervous for a second, wondering if Karl would say some other name than the one he'd used less than a minute ago.

"My name's Odin," he said. "Yeah, I know." He shook hands with Karl. "It's very nice to meet you."

"Pleasure's all mine," Karl said, joking, and kind of making fun of Odin's sudden formality. It wasn't awkward, just an unexpected twist.

Odin shook hands with James too, smiling about Karl's remark. "'Nice to meet you too, James."

"Not at all," James said, in a very fake but absurd and hilarious Cockney accent.

Laughs were had by all.


	6. six

**12:09 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

"To be honest," Molly said, unlocking the door into her and Polly's apartment, Pete panting at the door and pacing a little, eager to go in for a small treat, "I didn't wanna go to the police station any more than you did." Door opened. Pete ran in. Odin had already un-leashed it. "But…what now?"

Odin stepped close to her and let his hands settle on her waist. "I'm not completely sure." She kissed him lightly on the lips. He continued: "I wanna round up your friends and then go someplace we'd be comfy in."

She let some of her hair get in her face, then said in a delightfully alluring manner, "What about _your_ friends?", wrapping her arms around his neck.

"Uh…I'll explain that later."

**12:34 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

"I'm gonna call that Marion girl," Odin said. "I'm kinda worried about her now." He'd mostly been playing compressed-fetch with Pete in the living room while Molly, next to him and holding his other hand, called people. "Are you okay with that?"

"Completely," she said, putting her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder. Her chin poked into his shoulder blade. She nibbled at his earlobe.

"I'm gonna put it on speakerphone, because I'm a nice guy," he said.

**12:36 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

They decided to get all the weapons they had and put them on the coffee table (read: footrest) by the couch first.

Marion answe**red**, "Odin?"

"Uh…yeah," he said. He wanted to be reassuring but he wanted to say "I don't remember anything about Us, if we're an us, and in fact can't hook up with you now because since I forgot anything about the hypothetical Us, I've become romantically linked with another girl whom you unfortunately are more attractive than."

"Where are you? I'll be there in…eight seconds."

"Uh…We'll talk about that later. Are you safe?"

"From what?"

"Zombies."

"Zombies?"

"Yes. Zombies."

"You're serious, aren't'cha, honey?" Like handling it that way was the only way she could handle it.

"I'm gonna pick you up and bring you where I am. It's safe here."

"Okay. It's okay if I kiss you a lot when I see you, right? I know you kinda have a kissing thing, but…we haven't talked since Wednesday." With a giggle, like "and that hurt me" would hurt too much to say it. Odin felt uncomfortable, wondering why she said they hadn't talked instead of pointing out he hadn't taken any of her calls.

"I'm sorry," Odin said. "I love you. I wouldn't do that, but…things have been really weird for me since Wednesday."

"You love me?"

"Have I not said that before?" Molly and Odin exchanged a look, like "Oh, fuck, am I totally leading her on now, and completely by accident?"

She laughed. "Of course you have! But…not first. It's okay that we haven't talked, alright? Just come get me!" She sounded excited.

"Do you have any weapons?"

"I have a knife…" Like it wasn't much of a knife.

"Marion, I have something to warn you about, and you should listen, because this will affect you, probably soon."

"I'm listening."

"About the zombies. They're slow zombies, so it's not hard to get away from them or anything, but they _are _zombies. They want to eat your brains and gain your knowledge."

Marion laughed nervously.

"Marion, listen to this, if you listen to anything I say: The zombies we're talking about walk slowly. It looks…wrong. They extend their arms at people and moan when they see something they're going to eat. Marion: If you get near one of them, run. Keep your phone and tell me if you're not home if you can. If I don't see you there I'll look nearby, but I need to be here, so I can't stay indefinitely. Sorry, I tangented."

Marion giggled. So did Molly. Marion said, "It's okay, honey." _Maybe she didn't hear Molly_.

"Good. Now: If you get near one of them, run. They won't keep up, but they could follow you forever." Molly looked at him like "How do you know that?" He added "I think," then continued, "If you get corne**red**, take your knife and stab it into their temple. You should get to the brain that way. Do you have any other weapons?"

"There's some heavy stuff I could hit people with."

Odin thought for a second. Lightbulb, "How are you at home? Isn't this a school day?"

"I'm skipping," she said, like she knew it wasn't particularly naughty or dangerous, but like she liked pretending it was.

"Why?"

"I just didn't feel like it."

"Okay. I'll call you back when I'm on the road."

"Okay." She waited a second, mentally urging for him to say something else so hard he was pretty sure he felt it. He said nothing. "I love you, Odin."

"I love you too."

A hangup later: "You're my girlfriend. You're staying here. When I'm with her, nothing's going to happen. If she kisses me or anything, I'll explain us. I will anyway, but if she does that I'll do it sooner."

"I know," Molly said, stroking his hair, kissing his neck. "I trust you, Odin."

Does she? That concept was hard-to-grasp. He couldn't imagine trusting anybody, and he couldn't imagine why he couldn't.

Odin smiled, but couldn't otherwise respond to what Molly said. "I love Marion, but not in a girlfriendy way. I'm kinda hoping I'll figure out why when I'm with her. Do you think she's related to me or something?"

Molly laughed. "I _hope _not."

"Come on," Odin said. "That's not funny, and it hurts that you'd make fun of me."

"No, honey, I didn't mean that," Molly said, in a tone so sweet Odin thought he'd died in the car crash or in the ice cream parlor, like maybe he'd fallen down the stairs and broken his neck, then drifted into heaven, where everyone's personal angel had a voice like that. Molly stroked his hair. "I didn't mean it at all." She smiled. "I just meant in…"

"It's okay," Odin said. "I deserved it. Just…I know this is selfish, but try to be sensitive to my memorystuff, okay?"

"I will be. I _promise _I will be. I'll be so sensitive it'll be like that word doesn't exist."

He smiled. "Thanks."

They locked eyes for an interminable amount of time. Could've been hours.

Odin put a hand on Molly's outside shoulder and applied pressure as if to say "If you'd like to lean toward me, I'll help." He kind of wanted to pull her in but when he imagined how that would feel, he figu**red** he'd hate it if anybody did it to him.

Molly leaned toward him, then kept going. She put her outside hand on his face and manipulated his head a little, mostly by suggestion, to be in-line for her.

**12:41 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

Odin wouldn't take Molly's Sunfire, no matter how politely or forcefully she thrust its keys upon him. Somehow, he knew he would be able to commandeer some other vehicle, even if he didn't have keys to make it easy.

The victim: A **red** 2007 Jeep Commander. It looked like it would be great for zombie-smashing, and relative Molly's apartment building, it was the closest vehicle.

When he went through the city-proper, Molly called him.

"I see you on the news," she'd said. "I feel like it's you. Are you in a **red** SUV?"

"Yeah," he'd replied.

"I thought you didn't like them."

"I don't. It was really close. And it's called a 'commander.' I didn't have any choice."

She laughed.

"Don't go. I know you love Marion, but I'm too afraid for you. There are gonna be a lotta zombies between her and you." She waited a second. "And us."

"Hold onto Pete and my gun. I'll be fine. You know that, right? Never before has there been a zombie-killer like me."

She giggled. "I'm sca**red**."

"I am too. Tell you what: Every time you get sca**red**, text me. Say you love me or to be careful or something. I need to call Marion to see where she is."

Molly remained quiet for a second.

Odin added: "So I can get back to you sooner."

"Be fast, okay?"

"I will."

"As soon as you see her, be like, 'Bitch I gotta get to my awesome girlfriend!' Then punch her in the face and just run."

Odin felt he knew where she was going with it. After he giggled a little, for her benefit, he said, "What if I hafta run by some zombies?"

"Then ya swing her at em. She prob'ly has really fat legs or something. She'll be perfect for it."

"Don't be too mean, Molly," Odin said. "You don't have anything to worry about."

"She's prettier than me. And I bet her boobs're bigger."

"She looks like a hooker," Odin said. Marion didn't, but it was easy to say that for Molly.

Molly laughed. "You have a point there."

"I'm gonna hang up," Odin said. "Remember what I said about texting."

"I will," Molly said. "I…uh…" She sounded like she smiled when she continued: "I love you."

He couldn't talk for a few seconds.

"Odin? Are you there?"

"I wasn't expecting that."

"I wasn't either," Molly said.

"I'd say it back, but then you'd worry more. Now you'll be mad at me or something because I'm not gonna give you a chance to debate that." He hung up.

He felt Molly laughing – he had this weird sense of a bond, and, active, he was sure he felt her laughing. Or maybe he was afraid he was wrong, that she wasn't kind of upset he didn't say it back as opposed to kind of fine with how he said it back, very indirectly. He shut it out of his mind.

**12:44 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

Odin expected things to be going a little bad in Dalton, driving through it, but things were a little different. The air raid siren went off again. His phone vibrated…once, with a text message.

Odin felt disappointment upon hearing the siren. He meant to ask a police officer what that meant.

Then he got back to absorbing what was happening. The city had an about-to-realize-a-zombie-outbreak's-happening kind of feel. He saw a few zombies wandering around in a few streets. He saw one explosion, like somebody was cooking in that kind of stove, got attacked, fi**red** a gun or struck a match or something, or like somebody just happened to have a propane tank wherever, and that that somebody happened to decide to end it, right then and there, and that the explosion had nothing to do with the zombie stuff. Odin heard a few more explosions, but they didn't affect him enough to make him think about what caused them, seriously or otherwise.

People would run out of buildings on occasion. A lot of people, he'd learned in a class, had firearms registe**red** to them in this city. Most of the people who ran out of buildings either had guns on their person, bullet wounds on their person, or both, on their person. Some stopped outside the buildings. Some kept running. One guy Odin saw was immersed in flames. Odin passed by and checked on the guy – who was screaming horribly – every few seconds, in his mirrors. After about 30 seconds the guy was just lying still in the middle of the road, silent.

**12:56 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

"Open up, Marion. There are a lotta zombies around here."

He could swear that he saw the door open and that he saw a kind of short but very well-shaped young woman pull him in and close the door behind him, but if Odin did, indeed, see all that, he instantly forgot it, and all he remembe**red** about getting inside Marion's house was that lips greeted him and he got inside somehow. Big, soft lips, and a rather invasive tongue. He felt like it was World War II, he was France, and that Marion's fat blood vessel, America, was invading his mouth. He kind of liked it after a couple seconds, though. Well, that was debatable. He lost all sense of time when he felt the lips latch onto him.

_Oh_, Odin thought, opening his eyes. It felt a little weird, but he couldn't think of how else he'd look around yet. The girl's body was a flesh-and-bones hourglass, the kind of physical perfection the Italian masters loved to put on canvas. He was in some well-decorated, lightly-colo**red** middle class house. Entryway, but the living room, with a sunken couch – which looked out-of-place, like the house's previous owners had installed it and that these owners hadn't felt like tearing it out – and various other accoutrements in it was just before them. This girl looked a lot like the one his phone promised, but with her eyes pressed closely tight, as if they wanted to get in their own two cents while closed. That idea in itself was silly, though, because their two cents was "I love you," which seemed to be the consensus throughout the rest of Marion's body.

He couldn't pull back. The door handle was jamming into his back, more with every second, the way the woman was pressing against him. God her beasts felt good against his chest like that.

Odin put a hand on her face, the other on her waist, although he didn't remember his hands ever getting there, and pushed Marion away from him. She gave up without much resistance, but the price of her concession was that she get to suck on his lip as she pulled back, and she put a lot into that.

"We don't have time for that," Odin said.

"You look like you don't remember the rule," she said. Now that he could see her better, yes, she was Marion, but he kind of had to abstract that because her face was so close to his he could taste her breath. She was caressing his waist and hips. _Stop doing that!_

"What's the rule?"

"That I hafta kiss you every time we meet up, at least twice," said Marion. "Once when we meet and once when we hafta go. And you were finally starting to write an amendment."

His phone vibrated, but he ignored it. With their bodies that close, Marion must have felt it, but if she did, she ignored it too.

"What's that?" asked Odin.

"That you hafta kiss me, if you can get yourself to."

_That kinda feels right_, Odin thought.

He said, "No, I meant, What's an amendment?"

She laughed and kissed him briefly, sandwiching his top lip between hers. And God it felt good.

"Marion, we gotta go. Seriously."

"I know," she said. "I just wanted to…" She wasn't sure how to say it. She grinned. "Kiss you a lot."

He smiled.

**1:17 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

On the way into Molly's apartment building, Odin and Marion saw a zombie, one directly in their way that they couldn't easily get out of it. Marion's reaction: Catatonic shock; she sta**red** at it. Odin's reaction: (with his looted collapsible baton) Bashing its fucking skull in.

"What's she crying for? Is she okay?" Molly asked.

"No," Odin said. Molly kissed him and he paused to accept and savor it. He went toward her a little for another kiss and soon found her kissing him again. "I…She didn't take it well."

Marion sat on the long couch and wept. The couch had that kind of look – "If you come into this apartment, if you're going to sit, go there. Not to any of the chairs or anyplace else."

"I don't blame her," Molly said, either enjoying holding Odin a lot or enjoying how he put his hands over hers. Hers were around his neck. She kissed him again.

"We gotta hold back with that a little," Odin said. "It sounds like we were…close. I'm not sure how to put it, but I don't wanna hurt her. I really do love her."

Molly, dragging a finger along his lips slowly, said "Do you really love _me_? Cuz I really love _you_."

"I love you," he said. He detached himself from the term to get it out. If he really felt it and meant it, he wasn't going to be able to get it past his esophagus.

Molly smiled. Maybe he was a good actor, maybe she understood what just happened inside him.

**1:19 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

Marion, no longer crying, had to be "alone." She sat on the couch, but not near Odin and Molly. Molly being between Odin's legs, leaning back against him. He didn't put his hands on Molly, for Marion…but then Molly put his hands around her, just under her breasts. He wasn't sure how intentional the way when she breathed his arms would just touch her breasts was, but he didn't care, and Oh no!, now that his hands were on his girlfriend, he couldn't remove them.

"We wouldn't be safe in the police station or wherever the fuck we're gonna get told to go," Odin said. "I think we should all get our best friends forever and families and stuff and go out to a farmhouse or something. Or…maybe further out than that. What do you two think?"

Molly twisted around. If Odin weren't so coordinated, that would've put one of her breasts firmly in one of his hands. "I just wanna be with you." Sincerely.

Marion made an empathetic noise – sincerely – like she was okay with Odin and Molly.

"You're seriously okay?" Odin asked. "Maybe I'm not supposed to say anything, but I love you. I want you happy, okay?" Odin pointed at her to punctuate that, but didn't take into account where his hand was. It might have come off as distasteful. "Whoops." The women laughed, Molly very self-consciously. Odin was too embarrassed to do more than grin and…blush? He might have blushed.

"I'm fine," Marion said. She looked to Molly. "Don't mind me if I check him out once in a while, okay? His ass is perfect."

Molly giggled. The way Marion said that, Molly couldn't really respond any other way. "That's true."

"Now that I'm in the same place as you…uh…don't hurt yourself, okay?" Marion asked Odin.

"How'd you know about that?" Odin asked.

"I've known for a while. We…we had sex."

"Oh," Odin said. He just as easily could've said "Duh."

Molly turned back around to face him. "If you ever think about doing it, come to me, okay? Don't do it before that."

"I don't know if I can promise anything."


	7. seven

**4:20 ****am**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

"Honey?" Molly asked, walking toward him. When she heard him sob, she instantly sat next to him and held him. Molly put an arm behind him, like "Move forward so this can go further," he leaned forward, she got a hold of him, With her other hand, she pulled his head into her bosom and held him. "What's wrong, baby? Please tell me." Rubbing his back, channeling love.

"I don't know," he said. "I had to go to the bathroom," he said, sobbing, feeling hot tears meet her shirt. He felt so unbelievably sad he could hardly speak, and he definitely couldn't think. "So I did, and when I went back this way I kinda just fell and started crying." She stroked his hair, kissed his forehead, rubbed at his back and arms, anything she thought of. He didn't have the slightest idea where her arms were. He was so sad he'd kind of forgotten a body was attached to him.

"It's okay," she said. "You'll be fine. I'm gonna be here until you're fine, okay?"

"You won't do that," he said.

"Yes I will."

"Nobody would. Everybody abandons me." Which felt true to him. He didn't think about that before he said it, it just came out, like it was something he knew, but had never thought about before saying it just then.

"Well _I'm_ not going to."

"Something'll scare you off. Something always does, or if not you'll just abandon me arbitrarily."

"No I won't. I couldn't. Not even if I wanted to. I don't want you further than three feet from me for the rest of my life."

"Now you're making fun of me."

"No I'm not."

He couldn't speak, then, and he didn't know why. He would've decided to let it out, a little, if he had any choice in the matter. Instead, without even noticing when he started, Odin cried, for a long time. Every once in awhile, Molly cooed something sweet – that he'd be okay, that she loved him. Whatever. She rubbed him, held him, kissed him and did everything else he couldn't imagine anybody doing. Not for him.

He surfaced. "I don't remember anything about my life from before when I woke up at the **Red** Cross thing."

"What?"

"I'm never gonna be able to say that in one breath again." Molly laughed. "I…I just don't remember." He couldn't tell how she felt about that. "I'll leave if you want me to." She didn't react to that either.

He let go of her, made to stand. She squeezed him, hard. "Don't."

He resigned and sat again, but didn't know what to do with his hands. Hers were around his neck, and with the way they were sitting he couldn't do anything with his but put one of them around her waist, behind her, and let the other dangle. When she saw that, she released one hand from his-neck-duty, and offe**red** it. He took that and interlaced their fingers, resting them on her closest knee.

He felt fine, but when he said "What do you want? Tell me what you're thinking about" he almost busted out sobbing again.

"I love you."

Molly said it like it was the only thing anybody could've said in such a situation. It probably was.

Odin knew there was something he was supposed to say, but, even after opening his mouth like something would just pour out, twice, he realized that whatever it was, he couldn't say it. He felt a tear sliding down his cheek, though. Molly let go his hand and wiped the tear off his face, then put it on him like she wanted to say she loved him again but couldn't – "Or else," said her eyes and lips, quivering, "she'd cry."

Her eyes flicked to something below his eyes, close to them. He couldn't tell what.

"What the fuck is that?"

Molly said it. She was afraid, concerned suddenly. Odin got the impression that whatever she was speaking about, he probably would've reacted the same way to, had he seen it first.

Because of the way some floodlight, or more likely the moon, outside, was positioned, Odin's right side was getting a little light thrown onto it sloppily. His arm was more shadow than light, and in the light, and in some of the shadow, Odin's light t-shirt was dark and dotted, and partially lined, with something that looked wet. Odin hadn't noticed it while he was crying. He'd forgotten, but now that he saw it again, he knew exactly how it got there.

He looked back to Molly. He didn't want to explain what that was, how he knew what it was, how he was still bleeding a little, or how he had been recently, anyway. She was going to find out, and after she did, she was going to raise her voice, or be mad in general, or try to make him promise something. He felt love in her eyes, and most certainly saw it, but anger was the most prevalent emotion there. Confusion was a biggie, too. Her eyes looked huge and wet in the moonlight.

Odin couldn't move.

Molly could. She lifted his shirt's sleeve. Under it were cuts like crazy, most of them with some dry, some fresh blood on them as if to make the whole area look composed. Clearly, it wasn't. Almost none of the cuts were of the same length. Some were centimeters long. One was small but deep. Some were inches long, some were very shallow.

Speechless.

She moved him, and he helped plenty, and then they looked at his other arm.

Molly spoke, and it didn't really sound like her voice when she did: "Did you do that?"

"Yes."

Tears erupted from her eyes.

Why?

I don't know. I don't remember waking up or anything. It was like I was lying with you, feeling really comfortable, and…happy, and safe, then…I had like 16 cuts on my arms and I was just finishing one of them.

What'd you do it with?

A knife I had. The one I cut everybody outta my car with. It's really sharp so it didn't hurt that much but it still went deep.

You just said you didn't remember doing any of the cuts.

I don't. It's like I never…did it, but I have the blood to prove it. My arms kinda hurt, too.

Do you mean that? You really don't remember doing it?

I really don't.  
Teary.

This really scares me.  
Crying a little, again. But Odin knew if he made to hold her she wouldn't let him. Might make her more angry that he tried.

It bothers me, but it feels right somehow.

How?

I don't know. Like I deserve the pain. I'm…I'm a bad person.

I don't like any bad people, and I _love _you. How could you be a bad person who I love?  
(She sobbed a little, then suppressed it.)  
That just wouldn't make sense.

I guess not.

Please don't do it again. I feel like I can't help you.

She broke, sobbing, crying again. He moved her legs out of the way and placed his hands on her so that if he pulled she'd come his way. She didn't resist. He made like he'd pull. She leaned a little. He pulled a little. She shifted and let him hold her, buried her head in him somewhere.

Said Molly, "I love you way too much to let you do that, but I don't know what I can do."

Said Odin, "Don't worry about it. We'll see what happens if I do it again."

"Okay," she said. "I'm really sca**red**. I don't even know why I'm crying."

"I don't know why I was just crying either," Odin said, now crying again, a little. "We have so much in common." He said that and just _knew_ his history with it. He liked learning a single thing about somebody he didn't know well and then saying they had so much in common for that one thing. He cry-giggled at the in-joke – the one that he wasn't really privy to.

"What?" asked Molly.

"I'll explain later," said Odin. "Just let it out, okay? I'm too confused to be able to say anything else."

She cry-laughed.

"Do you remember when I said I can't remember…like, my life?" asked Odin.

"Yeah," said Molly.

"It's true," he said. "I don't know who I am or my past or…anything."

"Okay, here's one thing we _do_ know: You're perfect."

"Good place to start from," Odin said. He laughed. "As far as I can tell Marion's my girlfriend, and I have a couple best friends who worry about me. I think I live in Dearborn."

"The snooty rich people place?"

"Yeah," he said, "but I'm not snooty or rich. I have, like, just enough money not to be poor."

"Oh do you?"

neither of them crying

"Yes, I do," he said. "I feel like I live alone in an apartment."

"Well you don't now."


	8. eight

**3:48 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

Along with Molly, Marion and about 25 close friends and family members, Odin was watching Dalton rip itself apart from the roof of Molly's apartment building downtown. He'd expected people to start panicking, fleeing, getting violent and above all looting hours earlier, around when he picked Marion up. Humanity'd never looked so ugly.

The explosions were more or less continuous, but most gas stations and things fueled had gone already, and from there the loud stuff would probably only subside. That was the impression Odin got, anyway.

Society in ruins.

"Will you rub my back, please?" asked Molly.

"Do you like how I do that?"

"Yes."

"Really?" asked Odin honestly.

"I like it a lot," said Molly honestly.

Odin began, and as he did, he saw three police squad cars pull up by the building's entrance. He didn't like how they blocked his Commander in.

Molly pee**red** over the safety rail at the cops, calling out, "I can see you!" It seemed to irritate one of them.

**3:56 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

Odin heard somebody say "Masks, for gas!" a couple times before the police stormed onto the roof. That almost frightened him, but clearly frightened many of the other people there, especially including Marion. Odin wonde**red** why until

Inhuman as though the – five? Six went in – cops looked in their supposed-to-be intimidating uniforms and black gas masks, Odin could tell none of them expected to see some 30 people on the roof, half-lounging, half-relaxed, half-wondering what to do, or what would happen next. That many of those people quive**red** at the cops' appearance must have emboldened them. One cop didn't seem to care who was sca**red** and who wasn't, though, looking brave and commanding and authoritative, perhaps in spite of the chaos surrounding the building, and he was the first cop to remove his mask.

The first cop to remove his mask was 40ish, and looked experienced, touting a bulky but short Smith and Wesson Model 627 – a .357 Magnum revolver with an eight-round cylinder, where, commonly, .357 Magnum revolvers held six; and, in this instance, a 3-1/2" barrel – had a look that said "The next thing that's going to happen is this: You're all coming with us." Odin had to admit, the cop looked wise partially just because he was carrying a .357 Magnum revolver, a mark of experience. Cops would usually carry smaller-caliber magazine-fed pistols that would carry much more than five, six or even eight rounds, like a Glock 17…They'd carry 17 rounds, but they'd take a quite few shots to stop somebody, whereas in one big, juicy hit, a .357 Magnum revolver would probably knock down or kill a target. Most cops would avoid shooting a human at all costs, and most smart cops would want a firefight to be as short as possible.

Instead of saying what Odin thought he might, Wise Cop said, "You need to come with us." He had a voice two stops short of being dynamic and deep enough to do movie trailers.

Odin pushed Molly a little behind himself, and readied himself for a quickdraw. If he did that, he'd immediately blast any of the five cops. Any of the five cops who were almost 15 yards away, which was far for a pistol. A few of them recognized what he was doing, but the others either didn't, or had been tasked to mind some of the other people up there.

"Are you gonna make us?" asked Odin.

Marion looked at him like she didn't know he could speak that way. "That way" meant that Odin he could not only protect Molly but kill all five cops, probably without being inju**red**.

"No," said Wise Cop. The other officers lowe**red** their weapons – three shotguns, two pistols – slightly, a few degrees below the horizontal.

"How are we going with you? Our cars –" (he gestu**red** to Molly) "can't hold everybody. That'd leave 13 to you, but I'm not letting anybody leave if anybody else has to walk. Are you okay with carrying that many?"

Odin liked the wise cop. While most of the other four cops kept trying to interrupt Odin, the wise one let him speak. Which was good; The intrusion made Odin itchy for a fight. Overpowering four cops with his voice helped satiate him a little.

One of the cops began to answer, but the wise cop gla**red** at them, and they shut up. "Yes I am," said the cop.

"Good," said Odin cheerfully. "We have six guns and a couple knives between us. We're not violent, but I'm not gonna relinquish them before we get to the station."

By the way she moved, she was Wise Cop's partner. A little younger than him, but her chin made her look a little older. A pretty attractive female police officer who looked like she'd seen a few too many street fights pulled her gas mask off and asked, "What makes you think we're going to the police station?"

Said Odin, "Ya ever…get kind of a hunch? Like, This kid's not in a mood for sarcasm?"

Wise Cop grinned, but his partner looked kind of pissed.

**9:11 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

On the way, Odin said, "I have a bad feeling about this."

What Karl said about the gym was true…and vague. It looked like a needlessly oversized pipe bomb with miscellaneous colorful shit stuck to it went off inside. Pipe bombs are easy to make and messy, a pipe capped at both ends, and they go off like a shotgun shell of that size would – like a multidirectional shotgun blast would – if the shell came with a shockwave and a bad temper. Normally, people who make pipe bombs strap things like nails to their exteriors. _Maybe a 10-pound bomb-pipe doesn't do it for them_, thought Odin; Clearly, whatever metaphorical madman had plaste**red** the gymnasium needed more than a normal bomber would've, just for the thrill. The bomber just _had to _include cute, blood-smea**red** kids, and radios with people camped around them, and a plethora of little, bloody religious symbols. That definitely alluded to something bigger, but Odin wasn't sure what.

It was all Odin could do not to reorganize the whole place himself. Instead he put the people he'd bussed to Molly's apartment, driving through some hellish warzone, to use, then made other zombie outbreak refugees help, too. Some of them offe**red** to, some of them didn't. Fortunately, most of those who didn't took a shine to helping the kids out. At one point when Odin spoke with three orphaned kids, two amazingly cute little blonde girls and one amazingly cute little blonde boy – twins – he almost cried, but knowing that quite a few people would be taking care of them because of what Odin initiated, he felt pretty good about himself.

By about 9 p.m. the gym might've been clean and organized to military specifications, and by 9:05, Odin took a tiny styrofoam cup of cold water onto the roof and took a deep breath.

Whatever amount of deep breaths later Odin fell backward, letting go of himself and enjoying the thump he got on his noggin. Maybe looking up into Dalton's urban-light-and-pollution-blur**red** sky would take his mind off the 60-some zombies, the zombies one 30-foot fall away.

Then Marion's legs stopped by his head. He'd heard them coming before that, and felt like she was on her way before that, but igno**red** her.

She said, "How'd you get up here?" The ambient noise that the starved moans of 60 walking corpses made threatened to overwhelm her. It was a consistent moan – since they originally saw his legs, rich with life, they hadn't lost interest.

"How'd _you_?"

She didn't hear him. Odin couldn't fault her for that, not over the zombies. She sat down and lay back next to him. Oddly, the zombies' interest didn't increase upon seeing her legs, perfect, although too skinny.

When she was settled: "What?"

Odin grinned. Marion grinned, but more than she should have.

"How'd _you _get up here?" Odin repeated.

"Spiral staircase," she said. "Was that _your_ arrow I saw in the dust?"

Odin presented the guilty party – his finger. She probably didn't need to hold his hand to see the depressed grey dust on it.

"Oh," Marion said, letting go, grinning at: "The words above the arrow really threw me off."

Brief silence. Odin knew she'd wanted one but if he hadn't, the way she shifted would've told him as much. No, it would've _yelled _at him as much.

"Can I kiss you, Odin?"

"No."

She rubbed his arm. "I'm in love with you. I told you – I told _myself_ – I wasn't. You told me about how you'd forget stuff before, and I knew this might happen" (she moved inward, rubbed his chest) "but I never thought it would. Not to me." She reached up under his shirt a little, rubbing softly, then she reached a little more. She linge**red** there.

"I love you and I'm sorry I hurt you. Or that I'm still…hurting you. Whatever happened to me, I'm a different person now. I can't…be in a relationship with you. Not the kind you want, anyway."

"I know."

She held onto his face and gave him a last-kiss kind of kiss on the forehead.

"Will you…hold me? I know it's corny, but I need it," she said.

"It's not corny," said Odin. "I needed it this morning. I got it this morning, and I've been happy all day."

She moved as he spoke, he facilitated it. After a few seconds they were comfy, her on his chest, her in his arms.

Said Odin, "We can sit if you want to."

"No. I like laying better." Nuzzling. She looked way too cute doing it. "Thanks though."

"Sometime soon that attracted-by-experience thing's gonna happen to you. Then you won't wanna talk to me again. I'll detach, but don't try to hurt me, okay?"

"What?"

"I just confused you, didn't I?"

"Yes you did." As he stroked her hair. She leaned in a little, in that instinctive "do that more" way.

"Sorry." He wasn't done but

"That's okay," interrupted Marion, smoothing her hand over Odin's beard-scruff. By the way it felt, she'd clearly done it before.

Hearing a particularly loud zombie yell-moan threw Odin off a little, then he said, "What I mean is that you'll survive…whatever _this_ is," (Marion giggled, wiggling much too close to him) "and _while_ you survive it, there'll be some guy. Maybe not as perfect as me," (a laugh) "but alright. You'll probably marry him. Then I'll be a memory, if that. We probably won't talk anymore."

"I'll always love you, sweetie," said Marion, still running a hand over him. She smiled like she remembe**red** some in-joke of theirs. "Forever and ever, baby."

He smiled. He was afraid saying "That's completely wrong" would bother her, so he held back.

"You're…the one that got away," said Marion. "Figures."

They giggled.

"Who's your One Who Got Away?" asked Marion.

"She didn't," said Odin. "I reacted and I got her. I guess I should say 'get' her," he continued. He didn't know that, it was a memory, but he had no idea what it was a memory of. He didn't care, either, far too creeped-out by the way his brain and body took him over. _I thought _I_ was in control_, thought Odin.

He wanted to know how he knew that – "How?" – about as much as Marion did, by the way she asked.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean?" asked Marion.

"I don't remember," said Odin. Her face resigned; An "oh yeah" would've clinched the look. "Don't you remember my 'I Don't Remember Who I Am' monologue?"

She laughed a hot fusillade of breaths onto Odin's face.

"Speaking of memory…" said Marion, in a non-committal jokey kind of way. "No, I remember. It's just…you move like _my_ Odin." She dragged a finger dangerously close to one of his nipples, a hungry look in her eyes. "I really miss you."

Odin enjoyed that more than he'd admit to anyone, then thought of something funny and seized that as an opportunity not to get an erection. He'd already felt something awaken, and now he was in a rush to get the fucker back to sleep, so saying "Phrase that so it's funnier and more repetitive" was terribly easy.

Marion thought for five seconds, looked blank for three more, then got it, giggling. "I miss you, you."

Odin smiled.

Briefly thereafter, _It_ hit him. That was as close as he'd ever get to naming _It_. He started crying, a sob out of nowhere, an elephant in SCUBA gear in a rain forest, an honest, upfront person in the United States Congress.

"What?" said Marion, moving up on him, concerned. She embosomed his head lovingly, not taking advantage of the opportunity to squish her breasts into him. The girl could lie, but her eyes couldn't – not that well. "Please tell me what's wrong, baby. I'm freaking out." And she was.

Odin held onto her, not really aware of himself but doing it nonetheless. "I don't know who I am. My name's Odin and I'm a college freshman, but who am I? Who're my parents? How do I know how to use guns so well?"

"I don't know that either," said Marion, crying a little. "Your parents are named Stacy-Marieand Jack. Teresadied four years ago in a car crash. Jack abused you for most of your life. So did some of his friends."

"I guess that's why I hate guys," said Odin, with a laugh almost as loud as the sob that came after it. Marion smiled for the millisecond Odin laughed, then cried a little immediately afterward, independently of how Odin did. The girl loved him.

"It's gonna be okay," said Marion, kissing at him. "You'll remember everything you should but it doesn't matter if you don't. You're awesome, baby. I'm never gonna meet another guy I'll love as much as you."

"I'm weak," said Odin. "I only stand up for people and stuff cuz I can't do anything else. I'm always afraid."

"Brave people are supposed to be like that. You're a good person, honey. You're my _favorite_ person."

--

_We wish to point out here that except for his contribution to "eight," no more of Mr Bigwood's personal correspondence exists in this manuscript. Every effort has been made to contact the author, namely to find out whether he divided BioHazard into chapters at all, and if he did, his chapter division-points, chapter titles, and the first parts of "one" and "eleven," in addition to the eleven missing pages chapter "twelve" comprises. (The foreword is unpublished because so much of it is missing, it reads as complete nonsense.)_

_In the interest of full disclosure: Every effort has been made to provide accurate translations. If we have failed in this endeavor, we apologize in advance and will gladly correct any error(s) in subsequent printings all errors or omissions brought to our attention._–**The Editors**


	9. nine

**9:55 am Friday – 13 April 2007**

Odin heard Marion coming before she was even out on the roof, but he heard the contingent of three cops even before that. Maybe they meant to sound that way – unafraid. Sure he'd just _bend_.

"Please come with us, sir."

"Now?" Partially, he just didn't want to go from in-an-embrace-with-a-beautiful-woman to not-.

"Yes please."

Odin was not in That Mood. To submit. To do what somebody else said was "best for him" instead of what he felt was right. He wasn't going to give into anybody's fucking will.

"Okay," said Odin. He was up in a millisecond. To Marion: "Follow us back to the gym." Marion did not expect him to stand that fast.

"Sure."

The cops waited patiently for Marion to get up, as did Odin, except that he helped her instead of just staring.

One of the cops put a hand on Odin's back – that cop was going to lead him forward, off-balance, so he couldn't attack them. He was probably going to get handcuffed, too. Odin would give them the benefit of the doubt – that they'd bring him to The Chief – but be handcuffed, he wouldn't.

Odin glanced behind himself. One cop was behind Marion. Another was next to him, and a third was behind him – that was the one who touched him – but angled to see Marion, too.

--

_Odin grabbed the arm, twisted it further backward than any arm wanted to be twisted and spun around to see all three cops. He used the momentum that gathe**red** to kick the top to his side in the side of the throat. Odin was good was fists, and while he really prefer**red** to use his elbows, his legs were his real weapons in a fight like this. When Odin kicked Cop #1, the one to his side, he heard something snap, and Cop #1 went down with an exasperated, shocked, wet grunt._

_More to come._

_Odin grabbed Cop #2's other arm. Cop #2 was the one who'd touched him, and the one between him and Marion._

_Odin bent Cop #2's arms, hard and fast, backward, so far they'd break if Cop #2 tried to move._

_Cop #3 was drawing his gun._

_Cop #2 was right-handed. Odin was either left-handed or ambidextrous; he could be either, he wasn't sure. So many things were designed for right-handers he could just as easily have been either. When Odin grabbed for a sidearm on Cop #2's left side and hit an extra magazine pouch and a radio, he panicked._

_Cop #3's gun was about ¼ of the way up._

_Odin's right hand felt just as good as his left. He transfer**red** control of Cop #2's arms to his left hand, and, faster than Carl Crawford stealing second base, had Cop #2's gun in his hand. Odin hoped the gun had a round chambe**red** just as fast._

_Most self-loading pistols – "automatics" – work on double- or single-action mode. An "automatic" pistol, once fi**red**, will kick back its slide – the long thing on top that you pull back to cock the gun. When a self-loading pistol kicks its slide back, it does two things. The first thing it does is get rid of the cartridge of the bullet it just fi**red**, and who would want that around, right? The second thing a self-loading pistol's slide does, when it's fi**red**, is load a new bullet, shell and all, from the gun's magazine into the chamber. In the chamber, a bullet gets fi**red**, then leaves, usually and hopefully soon._

_Now, in single-action mode, not only is a bullet already chambe**red** in a self-loading pistol, but the gun is cocked. This doesn't apply to every self-loading pistol, which was part of what Odin was worried about when he pulled Cop #2's pistol out. When a gun that can fire in single- or double-action modes is cocked, its hammer is down, and its shooter doesn't have to pull the trigger much to fire the gun. Odin's pistol, although he didn't know it, would fire for him in single-action mode, just as soon as he put 4.5 pounds of pressure onto it._

_Odin's pistol was not in single-action mode, though. He wouldn't know that for another half-second, but his head was working so fast that would feel like much more time than it was. Fucking relativity._

_Odin's gun – well, Cop #2's gun – was a SIG-Sauer P229 Elite. A P229 Elite can fire in either double- or single-action mode. When a gun fires in double-action mode, it means that while it isn't cocked, it has a bullet in the chamber, and if its shooter pulls on its trigger hard enough, the gun will not only cock itself into single-action mode, but fire. Normally, a gun with a round chambe**red**, uncocked, indicates a prepa**red** but safe shooter – an "I mar have to shoot someone" shooter – because while having a round chambe**red** is not as safe as not having a round chambe**red**, having a round chambe**red** and pulling the trigger two or three times as hard as a normal pull is faster, easier and safer than pulling a gun's slide back and chambering a round in a fight – and, if you have to shoot somebody, that means they're probably shooting at you. Having a round chambe**red** in an uncocked gun is called Condition 2, with Condition 1 being a round chambe**red**, gun cocked, safety on._

_This was true for Odin with Cop #2's gun. There was not a round chambe**red**. Nothing would panic Odin again in this fight, but he certainly didn't like that._

_Odin assumed Cop #2 had a loaded magazine in his gun. An unloaded P229 Elite weighed 1.7 pounds, and it felt like it weighed 2 pounds to Odin – the weight of a loaded P229 Elite._

_Odin didn't want to think "What next?" if the gun was just coincidentally heavier than normal. He knew what he'd do if this didn't work – eject the magazine and load one, cock it and shoot at Cop #3 – but he also knew that with Cop #3 shooting at him, he might not be alive long enough to execute his My Gun's Fucking Unloaded? plan._

_Speaking of Cop #3: he took a shot at Odin. Marion was about five feet outside the line of fire between Odin and Cop #3, but Odin intended to broaden that gap. He would not let her get hurt._

_Odin let go of Cop #2 completely. Unwillingly, but he didn't have time to think. Immediately after he pulled the P229 Elite's trigger – immediately after it didn't go off – Odin freed Cop #2._

_Cocking his gun, Odin certainly didn't forget about Cop #2. He angled to keep his center of mass behind that cop._

_He did that because while it would hurt beyond hurt to get shot anywhere, the center of mass – namely, the torso – of a person is really easy to hit, compa**red** with the rest of their body. When frightened – by gunfire and bullets and pain, say – any person can move fast. Similarly, any person can get shot. On any person there are a few hard-to-hit points._

_Legs. They move more than anything, especially when fleeing gunfire, and they're relatively slight, even on the most obese person imaginable._

_Arms. While shooting at somebody in the leg is impractical because it's hard to hit legs, and isn't that likely to stop them, it serves a purpose, which is immobilization. Shooting somebody's arms could disable them, but it wouldn't do that much good, and in a life-or-death firefight, it would be a waste of the instant a person gets to shoot another person to plink at somebody's arm. Same rule applies to legs._

_Head. Not a waste of a shot – a headshot will end a fight about as fast as anything. Unfortunately, human heads, relative to human torsos, are goddamn small, not to mention quickly-moving. Thus: Chest. Preferably in the heart because a heart wound is a fatal wound, especially if it separates the aortas from the heart._

_Keeping his center of mass behind Cop #2, cocking his gun, Odin moved to the side as he could. He shoved Cop #2 a little – as much as he could – to the side away from Marion._

_Cop #3's first bullet slapped into Cop #2's chest, on the left side, toward the top. When Odin shoved Cop #2 to the left, he moved left, but he leaned right, and Cop #3 angled his two rounds to follow Cop #2, not Odin._

_Odin's plan half-worked. Cop #3 did not shoot Odin._

_It half-didn't work. Cop #3 shot Cop #2, but on the side closest Odin._

_Odin fi**red**, finally able to._

_Odin ran to the left after a bullet was completely out of the P229 Elite's barrel. Motion during firing, even during firing out of a short pistol's barrel, will influence a bullet's trajectory and flight path. This was muscle memory to Odin, and it didn't occur to him on a conscious level that if his first shot didn't fuck Cop #3 up pretty bad, he might not get a second shot. Not an Odin-still-unharmed second._

_Odin's first bullet hit Cop #3, and it hit him well. Odin didn't mean to kill the man, and he might never have to._

_When Odin fi**red** his first bullet, he really fi**red** three bullets. He definitely wasn't counting. The bullets formed a line up Cop #3's chest, walking upward at an angle from his heart to his shoulder/neck to where his neck met his head._

_Second-most important to the human body's staying alive is the brain. Technically, it's a tie between its brain and heart. The brain tells the heart, as well as everything else, what to do and how to do it. The heart fuels the brain (by way of blood). For this reason, an awful lot of blood runs between the brain and the heart. A person with both sets of their veins and arteries – the jugular veins and the carotid arteries – running head-to-heart – slashed open will die about after a minute's bleeding, for example._

_This is relevant because while Odin's first bullet may have only hit armor, bullet three hit the cop's neck. Standard cop-issue bullets in Dalton were hollowpoints – bullets with hollowed tips designed to fly like any normal bullet…until they hit flesh, at which point they would expand, doing just as much damage as they possibly could, and expending all their energy so that if they made an exit wound, which they normally did, preferably, nothing around what got shot would get hurt by the bullet. Odin's gun was definitely loaded with hollowpoints; The bullet that hit Cop #3's neck exited his neck and showe**red** the area behind him with blood, and left, most likely, leaving a shotgun-blast-sized hole in the back of Cop #3's neck. Through that and the entry wound, Cop #3 bled like a burst, overstuffed pizza roll._

_Then Odin shot cop #2 through the back of his head, and shot Cop #1, who looked unconscious, between the eyes twice._

--

Maybe it's good Odin didn't react the way he wanted to. The look was enough to make Cop #2 back off about one second before Odin would've attacked him.

**9:58 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

"_You're _the guy who does everything right on the first try," said Chief O'Neill to Odin, in his office. The place looked like it should have deer heads mounted high on the walls, and it smelled so cool in a 1930s gentleman's-club kind of way it almost mad Odin reconsider the cigar Odin offe**red** him.

"I _am_," Odin said. They were both seated, but something made Odin want to get up and shake O'Neill's hand again. O'Neill's grip was as firm as Odin's. Like it was a secret: "Who told you?"

"None other than Sergeant Tasso, loyalest of the loyal," said O'Neill, readying a cigar. Odin couldn't smell it, but it looked impress-the-person-I'm-going-to-ask-something-of good. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"No, but thank you for asking."too happy"And you're _Chief _O'Neill?"

"I am, and you're certainly welcome," said O'Neill, cutting the cigar's tip off with a shiny silver cigar cutter. "Odin, I don't see any reason to delay telling you why I brought you here."

In an agreeable, gregarious way: "I don't either. There are plenty of things to do, and some people I care about haven't reacted to, uh…the _situation _yet."

"I understand," said O'Neill. He lit up. "You're young, but you're smart. I can tell by looking at you, but what you did with the refugees proved it to me. You're a born leader. I want you to help me."

Odin didn't feel like helping, but he didn't let that show. Interested: "What with?"

"An unfortunate situation. Uh…some of my officers…didn't agree with the way I'm running things."

"How are you running things?"

"I don't think it's right to leave _anyone_ behind, but at the same time, sentimentality will get us all killed." A brief but too-long pause.

"Meaning what?" Odin said. "If somebody's infected you take 'em out back and shoot 'em?"

O'Neill laughed. Maybe Odin sounded so detached it was okay to. Maybe it was something else. "Yes." _O'Neill'seyeswerewrong_ O'Neill smiled and said, "Actually, we take 'em out to the _side _and shoot 'em."

"And…some officers with infected family members–"

"disagreed," finished O'Neill.

"Sounds like you handled it," said Odin, sounding very pleased indeed. "I don't see any disagreement among the ranks."

"That's exactly the problem," said O'Neill. "I don't know who I can trust. A lieutenant of mine, and…two of his men, tried to kill me. Not long ago." He took a few cigar puffs for dramatic effect. Odin almost laughed at the melodrama; it was pretty bad.

"And he said there were more of them."

"How'd you know?" _too guilty, too eager-to-learn_

"I didn't. I'm smart that way," said Odin, with a put-on "selling himself" tone. It was had to both act like he was selling himself, then, in addition to that, act like he was bad at acting like he was selling himself.

O'Neill grinned. He could've been lying, but Odin's act seemed to've worked. "Good."

"You want me to weed out the people who disagree."

O'Neill glanced to the two cops close behind Odin. "With this kid workin' for me I won't even hafta _think _anymore!"

"I guess not," said Cop on Odin's Left, laughing.

"Well heck, I don't mind," said Odin, also laughing. _Whywereboththecops'holsters'safetybeltsunclasped?_

"That's m'boy," said O'Neill.

"When I came in here – and this's _hours_ ago," said Odin, like he was going to tell a story. O'Neill leaned in like he was going to listen to a story. "I noticed a squad car, just about where a whole lotta zombies would be, once you retreated your gate guards a bit."

"Right," said O'Neill.

"Because…_as_ everyone knows, in zombie outbreaks, if people don't retreat all the way into their building, they never keep their outmost defensive layers. They might keep one exterior one, but that's if they're lucky. That squad car is probably 30 or 40 yards away from your last exterior barrier, which, I noticed, you had your guards retreat from. And _that_ barrier – the last one?" O'Neill nodded, with rapt attention. Odin felt the hands of the cops close behind him move further away from their sidearms. "That _last _barrier is maybe 10 yards, or even 15 from the actual front door."

"I'd say about 10, yeah," said O'Neill.

"Meaning," Odin continued, "if anyone were _fucked_ enough to be stuck in that car – which's lame in itself, cuz you're stuck in a car, right?"

"Yeah."

"But _upon_ that, you're stuck in a car, and between you and safety is…however many zombies."

"Hund**red**s," said Cop on Odin's Right, giggling in the way a story like that said one was safe to be giggling in. Cop on Odin's Right would take two or three seconds to get his gun out and fire, if the safety wasn't on.

"Thousands," O'Neill said, in that friendly making-it-more-ridiculous kind of way. The room went up in having-a-hell-of-a-time, comfortable laughter. Cop on Odin's Left snapped closed his sidearms holster like he'd meant to before and forgotten.

"Now, considering all that, I'm pretty sure, on my way in, that I happened to _hear_ somebody in that car!" said Odin.

"No way!" said O'Neill. His way of saying he knew, that he'd known Odin had known, and that he respected Odin's intelligence or at least awareness, and the way Odin was saying, Yes, I'm going straight into your pocket, O Great Master, and I like it.

"_Yes _way!" said Odin, incorporating more gestures and general physicality into the way he spoke, excitedly. Not too much. "There was a person _in that car_!" Jovially.

"You got me," said O'Neill, faux-caught and faux-ashamed to be. The cops close behind Odin laughed, just as sure as Odin did. "You got me. I put the lieutenant in there as soon as I secu**red** him and his men. There weren't many zombies there at the time."

"What'd you do with his men?" said Odin, very excited to hear about it. Not too excited. The cops close behind Odin wanted to hear it too, but they also clearly kind of knew already. Odin wasn't sure what that meant.

"I…" O'Neill paused. "Let me rephrase."

"Gladly," said Odin, in kind of a cheesy, excited-to-hear-the-story-continue interruption. "For now." One of the cops behind Odin laughed.

"There's this…huge group of zombies by the garage. I have _no_ idea why they're there. It's just…crazy."

"It _is _crazy," said Cop on Odin's Left. He'd be asphyxiating on his own blood before he even touched his gun.

Odin shifted a little, glanced at Cop on His Left and said, "I'd bet."

"So there're all these fuckin' zombies there. I could take a box of paper clips, of any size, throw it at them, and they wouldn't even hit the pavement."

"That's a lotta zombies," said Odin.

"It _is_," said O'Neill. "So…after we, uh, got _rid _of the lieutenant" (in a nudge-nudge in-joke I'm-not-entirely-serious way) "I bring these three cops out onto the roof, right?"

"Right," said Cop on Odin's Right, as Odin leaned in a little. His hand got closer to his knife.

"They _knew _it's gonna happen. 'This motherfucker is gonna throw us to The Horde cuz we tried to kill him,' right?"

"Yes sir," said Cop on Odin's Left.

"So here's what we do. Those gents were with me." Gesturing to the cops close behind Odin. Odin glanced at them. Cop on His Left nodded, grinning. Cop on His Right was grinning too.

"What'd you do?"

"I said, 'You tried to betray me.' No, I said, 'You _betrayed _me. I can't trust you because of that. But here's one thing I know: When faced with death, doing something you might later regret sounds…like a pretty good idea.'"

"Tell 'em, Captain," Cop on Odin's Right said.

O'Neill grinned in anticipation, very proud of himself. It sickened Odin a little. "So here's what I do. I give one of 'em a knife, one of 'em a baton and one of 'em a tazer. The…civilian kind."

"The kind you hafta touch people with?" asked Odin.

"Right."

"Nothing with range," prompted Odin.

"_Nothing _with range," said O'Neill. "So, they have their weapons, they're a little confused why I'd give 'em them, 'n' all that shit." Odin felt the cops close behind him lean in. "Then I say this: 'One, out of every three men, will betray his morals, or…what he believes in, to save his life. Or maybe it's not even his own, it might be for his kids or his wife or something.'"

"Yeah?" prompted Odin.

"'But,' I said, 'that doesn't mean that one of you three is that kinda guy. I might be wrong, or maybe you're just _too good_ to do that, and maybe you don't have anything to lose. _But_' – and I got all…melodramatic and touched my chin like this, then turned away – 'I have the feeling that at least one of you is that kinda guy.'"

"What'd they do?" asked Odin, clearly impressed.

"I really didn't know what to expect. Maybe I really was wrong, right?"

"Yeah."

"But I wasn't," said O'Neill. "When I said that, I just _knew_ they'd do it." O'Neill enjoyed that. Odin "just couldn't wait." O'Neill continued, "So I said this: 'I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I can't tell who to trust. So I'm giving you three this chance, whoever you are'" (O'Neill looked between three imaginary men at his eye level, somewhere past the cops close behind Odin) "' – prove to me I can trust you, and kill the two I can't trust."

"Are you kidding?"

"No way," said O'Neill, grinning. More laughs. The way the cops close behind Odin laughed made his ears twitch. "When I said that, though…they were just animals."

"They attacked each other?"

"Yeah. I got a little worried about myself for a second, on the edge of the roof with blood and weapons swingin' around like that." Laughs.

"Then what?"

"One of 'em fell off. The…" O'Neill looked to Cop on Odin's Left. "Baton, right?"

"Yeah, he wound up too much and slipped," replied Cop on Odin's Left, shying away from the spotlight even though Odin didn't look at him.

Odin looked to Cop on His Left. "He didn't even…get pushed?"

"No," said Cop on Odin's Left, laughing.

Back to O'Neill. "What about the tazer the knife guy?"

"It took a minute, but pretty soon the tazer guy taze**red** himself" (Odin's very convincing laughter interrupted) "and then the knife guy just pushed him off."

"What about the knife guy? Is he tied up in the basement or something?"

"I shot him."

O'Neill basked in that. Odin sta**red** at him, so awed. The cops close behind Odin reveled in it too. They almost said, "_I _serve this master manipulator."

Said Odin, "The real Chief O'Neill's out in the car, isn't he? And you guys betrayed him, cuz he wouldn't shoot infected people?"

O'Neill's eyes said "yes" before anybody could do anything else.

Odin sprung up and forward, pulling his knife out its sheath in his crotch seemingly before the room's fluorescent light had a chance to flicker and re-flicker.

He flowed forward partially-over Impostor-O'Neill's desk and jabbed the knife through the man's eyes and beyond, faster than a Roger Clemens fastball,

then sprang off the desk, backward, kicking straight into Cop on His Right's throat so hard Odin heard something crack. It was a wet crack.

Odin had to do that with his right leg to get to Cop on his Left fast enough. While Impostor-O'Neill slumped facedown on his desk lifelessly, while Cop on Odin's Right stagge**red** backward, Odin rushed Cop on his Left. Odin wanted to slam the cop into something, but that would be too loud. Instead he went the fastest way he could think of, got to Cop on his Left's face – head – and karate-chopped him in the neck, impossibly hard.

Cop on his Left went down like a cement truck full of smaller cement trucks, but before he could hit the floor, Odin got behind him, got him in a headlock and broke his neck – a slight twist to the right, then a hard one to the left, as far as the head would go. Odin felt and kind-of heard a pop that made his stomach do somersaults like a hamster on adrenaline in a small metal wheel.

Cop on His Right was in bad shape, but he could recover. Maybe. Odin sprinted to Impostor-O'Neill and jerked the knife out his eye socket. He felt eye-jelly and blood on the handle as he finished the sprint – he angled it so he'd never really stop – and shoved the knife into the base of Cop on His Right's neck, going downward, toward his heart. The artery wouldn't have anywhere to go and he would bleed to death.

15 seconds later Cop on His Right bled to death and Odin was armed again, although, unfortunately, his front side was about as bloody as it should be if he'd just slashed somebody's throat open.

**10:24 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

Odin emerged from Impostor-O'Neill's office two guns heavier, but pretty unsure of what to do.

_See if I can get the good guys on my side. Save this place from the bad guys, however many there are. Secure it. Save O'Neill in the squad car. Cuz it's not impossible or anything._

_Find Karl._

_Find Molly first._

**10:27 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

Seeing Molly from such a distance was weird. He'd never seen her that out-of-context, so intimately far away. On his way into the gym he watched her, in the back, helping put a few kids to bed – and the anticipation of what she'd do when she got to him, or when he got to her, nearly drove him insane. His hands got sweaty. He felt like she would've forgotten what they had together. He wanted to kiss her, but he knew he'd completely freak out about that and not do it when she was within that kind of range. If she still wanted him like she had before he wasn't even sure if she'd be okay with his kissing her. He wanted her to kiss him, too, and grab onto him. He'd grab onto her if she seemed okay with it.

She kissed him briefly, enjoying it, about two seconds before Odin's head would've exploded from the shakes he had, and then Molly stayed close and held him by the shoulders. "Are you okay, honey? Where were you? What'd those cops want?"

Odin replied, "Hi."

She smiled like she shouldn't have, touching him gingerly like he'd been shot or stabbed or something. "Are you okay?" The way she made herself vulnerable like that, her voice heavy with concern, frightened Odin. He liked the tenderness, but he didn't deserve it, and it felt wrong.

"I'm…yeah," he said, no other words really coming to him. "I'm nervous. I can't explain why yet, but I will. Trust me, okay?"


	10. ten

**A/N**: Thanks to everyone for checking out my story! I really appreciate feedback - as I've said before, what with this being an experiment, I need to hear what folks think of it.

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**10:29 pm**** Friday – ****13 April 2007**

"I got it, but I don't like it," Molly said, smiling. "Don't say that, okay? You _can't _die."

"That's what _she_ said."

Molly laughed. "Why do you always do that?"

"What?"

"Undercut the seriousness of…everything."

"That's just me, baby," he said, getting close to her and taking her earlobe between his lips and sucking, then blowing, softly. She giggled.

"I really like that."

He backed off a little. "Be careful, okay? If you get into a firefight you didn't think about enough you'll probably lose it."

"I'm…" She looked into his eyes. "Do you have a gun?"

"Grab my crotch."

She did.

Said Molly, "Big gun."

Said Odin, "Big crotch."

**10:36 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

A few different people had looked at Odin on his way back to the gym, Marion, walking to a bathroom, being one of them. He probably got lucky that time – nobody really stopped and asked him what was happening, maybe – well, likely – out of shock. "Why the hell's that guy have _blood _all over him? He's not a zombie…" Of those people, every one looked at Odin when he left again, to try to find Karl or some authority figure and tell them what happened with…not-O'Neill. In addition to the people who'd looked at Odin before, many, many more did. Odin figu**red** it was the blood – he'd been splashed with it pretty good, and now it looked even weirder because it was all dry and **red**dish-brown. That he had a dead cop's SIG-Sauer P229 Elite in one of his pockets and ammo in the other probably didn't occur to anybody – especially not after seeing blood on his face, much less his shirt or pants.

Finally, as Odin thought of it, one cop – no, two cops – sta**red** straight at him, on his way toward the lounge on the second floor. They'd been following him, definitely, and one of the cops Odin knocked out on his way to Molly was with them.

He could shoot them.

_Nah_, thought Odin. If he did that, every person in the whole goddamn city would know that some threatening presence was in the second floor of the police station.

Odin frowned.

Then he ran.

In his perspective, four hours later, he rounded a corner just behind him and raced toward a recreation center. In reality about six seconds had gone by. In the rec center were weights and exercise equipment galore, and the lights were off.

One of the three cops shouted at Odin, for him to stop immediately. Another of the three cops shouted, except he said something nasty. The third one, whom Odin had earlier rende**red** unconscious, said nothing. Listening to their footsteps, that one seemed to be lagging behind the other two a little.

For about 4 seconds – it felt like as many minutes, if not more, but it could've been longer – everything was perfect, in a weird way. It was true that three police officers were chasing after him, and that everything wasn't perfect, but everything was. He was going to get away, and then he'd find someone sympathetic to his cause, and everything would be perfect. He might even sort of have fun as he solved the puzzle O'Neill had dragged him into. How many other cops knew about that? Could Impostor O'Neill have snuck it by, because of how chaotic/apocalyptic the whole situation was? How many cops supported what the real O'Neill had been doing, with regard to infected people?

Sometime between "regard" and "infected," two cops, chumming up, smiling, laughing and having fun, stepped out of a lounge. No, it was an interrogation room, Odin had forgotten. Maybe they'd been playing videogames or something – he'd heard about how cops used the rooms to have system-link _Halo 2_ fights, and the cops coming out looked like gamers.

Those two cops realized exactly what was happening before the three cops chasing Odin even said anything to them. They got ready to grab Odin, and a second later, one of the pursuing cops said, "Stop him!"

Odin knew what he'd do, but took care not to telegraph his motions.

He felt his heart pounding inside his chest. Somehow, he knew this level of physical exertion wouldn't make him sweat, or get this pumped up, but the mental side had kicked him into overdrive and it almost felt good. Seconds crawled by, as did time itself.

Odin threw himself, becoming sort of an arrow, shooting between the two cops ahead of him. They'd spread out too much for him to go around and not lose the momentum he'd need to get through, and he wouldn't've been able to jump over them…so he went straight through, and head-first. He freaked out right before he vaulted into the air. There was no way he'd land. One of the cops would grab his ankle or something, then he'd slap face-first into the cold marble floor, bust his nose _off_, start pouring blood out of every orifice somehow, and then the cops would beat the living shit out of him for no reason, and then rape him. That was just too much.

Odin was almost entirely done with his rocky somersault forward, shooting himself up to his feet again, before he realized that about two seconds had gone by before he actually knew what was happening to him.

_Oh, I'm on my feet, running. I just got through those two policemen._

_And now there are five of them chasing me. They're gonna be pissed whenever this ends._

_I have to leave the station._

_No. Karl's gonna vouch for me._

_  
Why the fuck would he do that?_

_I'll double back and go to the lounge. Karl has to be there. If he's not, though, I'll find him, even if I have to bust into the ceiling and support myself on that metal shit between ceiling tiles and strangle myself half to death on wires and stuff. I will not abandon Molly._

Odin had to take a left. Soon, he'd go by a staircase. With his luck, an entire squad of cops in full riot gear would be there, coincidentally facing in his direction, coincidentally carrying some new less-than-lethal weapon that they would use to knock him down, and that would hurt a lot to get shot with.

Soon, he was. He might've plowed through a cop on the way to it, but he wasn't sure. Maybe he just thought about what he'd do if that happened. Maybe not.

Either about 40 seconds later or a few hours later, plus about three cops, he was in that lounge. He plowed through Karl, completely by accident, completely not seeing him. Odin was pretty sure he heard Karl say "What the fuck!" sometime after he bounced off the floor. Odin wasn't real sure where he was…

He was under a table, a chair hooked in one of his legs, his head throbbing like he'd just crashed into a lounge with a lot of white and black vinyl chairs in it.

"FUCK that hurt!" said Odin, rubbing his head.

"Why's all that blood on you?" asked a cop Odin hadn't seen before.

"Why'd you – oh," said Karl, as the seven or so cops chasing Odin caught up with him and ente**red** the lounge.

"We got you now, motherfucker!" said one of the pursuers. He had a dark **red** mark covering his face.

Odin thrashed about on the floor, knocking the chair on his leg accidentally off. It hit a vending machine and plunked off, landing with a loud metal tink back on the floor. "God dammit!"

The cops advanced on him, minus Karl and Karl's partner James, cautiously, but kind of understanding he wouldn't up and shoot any of them. They might also not have been aware he was armed. There were a few complicit cops in the lounge, too.

"How do you feel?" one of his pursuers asked. _He must be the sympathetic one_, thought Odin.

In too much pain from whatever he'd done to his head to suppress his sense of humor, and general impulses, Odin replied, "Good enough to fuck your mother!"

**10:49 ****pm****Friday – 13 April 2007**

Odin had long-since forgotten the transition between saying that and where he walked with the cops, although where he walked to was a table in the lounge, so he probably hadn't forgotten much.

"You're seriously willing to do that?" asked one of the cops. He looked very, very normal, perhaps 40 and had an odd birthmarky patch of brown and black skin on his otherwise chalky-white face, covering ground on the left side of his face. It went from above his sharp jawline, maybe two inches behind his chin, to about halfway down his neck.

_Uh-oh_, thought Odin, having just forgotten what _That_ was.

"Yeah. That Karl vouched for you is kinda enough," said another cop. He looked younger than Odin felt, and about as skittish as that white kid who shot himself in the head with a revolver in George Romero's _Dawn of the Dead_.

"No, I'll do it," said Odin. He got the feeling he'd have to in order to prove his good-guyness to the cops anyway, although immediately after volunteering, or perhaps re-volunteering, he wonde**red** whether it was a really bad idea, or just a bad idea.

"I'm actually really impressed," said a bald cop. He looked about that old, and Odin was pretty sure he'd bowled him over at some point in the pursuit. _I'm manic_, realized Odin. _I need to get shit done before I droop, and…I dunno what I forgot._

"Yeah?" asked Odin.

The bald cop nodded. "I kinda knew when I was chasing you you weren't a bad guy, but…I didn't think you'd save Chief O'Neill just to prove that."

"Well," said Odin, realizing how fucked he was, "I didn't wanna leave it up in the air, y'know?"

"Yeah," said the cop with the birthmark.

"You guys hafta trust me enough to give me a coupla guns, though. I'll prob'ly just get eaten if I'm unarmed."

"Well here's your SIG back," said the young, lily white _Dawn_-guy cop.

Odin took it, slightly disappointed that the thing was so 1diminutively small. He was pleased that it held 12 rounds of .40 Smith & Wesson ammo, but…still.

**11:06 ****pm****Friday – 13 April 2007**

Although Odin would rely on his spankin' new Heckler and Koch MP5A5 more than any other weapon in the future battle, he'd remember getting temporarily-his Beretta M9, technically an M92FS, the best. One of the cops who'd previously been chasing him handed it over. It was his service weapon. The gun had a large-circumference grip and a long double-action trigger pull, and Odin damn near fell in love with it. Its button-by-the-trigger magazine release was even on the right side, for a left-handed user's thumb to tap. The gun had been manufactu**red** for a left-handed person, and Odin was more comfortable using his left hand than his right. "I noticed you favo**red** your left hand," the tall, clearly-left-handed cop had said, "and you damn well better return it." Implied was "and my three magazines," all of which had been manufactu**red** by the Italian company Beretta itself. A US Armed Forces service pistol, the 15-round M9 magazines actually given to soldiers were usually ones manufactu**red** by other companies, but, most shooters agreed, magazines manufactu**red** by the weapon's actual company were of the best quality. The M9's grip sat perfectly in Odin's large-for-his-height hand, and the sights felt perfect, illuminated by radioactive tritium dots. Every round, perfectly hand-loaded by the tall cop with hollow-pointed bullets, promised to kill whatever they should hit, the fact that 9x19mm Luger rounds were weak relative other common American pistol rounds be damned. The M9 in Odin's hand was a special weapon.

"It's not too late to turn back," said Karl, his voice oddly soft and concerned.

Alarmed but determined to save O'Neill, Odin disregarded Karl's tone and said, "I know, but I'm still gonna do it."

"You're crazy," said James.

"Yeah?"

"Yes, you are," said James, "and I love it."

"Better that than 'just kind of like,'" said Odin. His comment got a few laughs, and the light, somewhat happy mood around him was awfully nice to see.

Equally nice to see were the five people around him in bulky, black riot gear, carrying massive, transparent shields, with large helmets with their clear, full-face visors turned upward so they wouldn't cloud them with breath or get too hot too early or anything. If any zombies wouldn't just back away from them, someone in their six-person backup team would kill them. Way behind those six people were five more, incase it went that wrong. With 10 snipers on the roof, a few even from SWAT, it probably wouldn't, but even without the snipers, Odin trusted himself and Karl. _It _won't _go wrong_.

Somewhere inside of 2 minutes later, Karl and James, working together, threw open the police station's front door. Two of the six men in the riot-backup team, armed with 12-gauge shotguns Odin didn't even bother looking at, stood aside Odin and opened up on the zombies there. For about 5 seconds, five heartbeats and one real moment, this is what Odin saw: blood. He was also deaf, although his goofy neon-green earplugs might've lessened that impact. The guys' shotguns went off at least 12 times, quickly, in the small space of the two-stage doorway into the police station, and the reverberation from the guns was crazy. It shatte**red** all of the staging area's showy glass.

As the glass rained onto the floor and outside the building, Karl's riot team surged out into the night, one of them almost tripping over either a zombie or a zombie's pool of slippery, although caked and congealed, blood.

Karl's team went out as far as they'd go for this operation, maybe 5 feet, heroic zombie-raiders simply beating back the zombie horde for Odin to go out.

Before Odin would move out, though, the riot team's firearm-toting backup squad came out. They killed off all the zombies inside of the semicircle Karl's team had secu**red**, then moved back into the station. Odin replaced them. Odin knew he was a good gunfighter, but he still felt pretty silly, one of him with a big submachine gun replacing six guys, three with massive, time-tested Remington or Mossberg combat shotguns.

Then Karl's team pulled back, their backs clear. They'd stay by the doors and keep the place as clear as possible for Odin to come back in…but the station simply didn't have the resources to really help Odin. It was a glorified suicide mission, and he knew it. He'd have to weave his way through a horde of zombies that could fill a few transcontinental flights, alone. Worse than that, every single zombie in the horde wasn't truly aware of every other zombie. One zombie might lunge at him, then another and another and another, and then he'd get completely cove**red** in zombies. All Odin had were his wits and a few guns. There were no explosives in the police station. Although with 10 snipers' guns' assistance, Odin would have to go through a few thousand people the old-fashioned way and save a person marooned in a locked police car. That person probably wasn't even alive.

Odin thought about what he should do for a few seconds, even though he didn't really need to. He'd planned about the moment when he became alone for awhile, with Karl and everybody else who'd back him up. He was going to cut through the zombies, spraying 9x19mm bullets at head-level, and then run, then do it more and run, then do it a few more times, creating a path just wide enough to get to the car O'Neill was in.

_Actually_, thought Odin, _I can't really _know _O'Neill's in that_. He was right. O'Neill's impostor, whose name Odin wasn't sure about, had never killed the three men with O'Neill. He'd just bound and gagged them in an office – he'd made up the entire story about them. _I guess that's why the other two guys were so interested_, thought Odin, squeezing the MP5A5's trigger. The gun was definitely loud, popping and tearing away at the air in front of it. It fi**red** about 13 rounds a second, which wasn't amazingly fast or anything, but which was still pretty fast. Odin wouldn't want to be anywhere close to the gun in front of it for fear the sonic pressure would knock him over or something, to say nothing about the actual noise or bullets roaring out the gun's 8.85" barrel.

For a second time, Odin was pretty sure the only thing he could see was blood. There'd been a wall of ordinary-looking townspeople – _ordinary-looking _dead _townspeople_, Odin corrected – in front of him, then he'd fi**red** about 30 rounds of 9x19mm ammo, and then all he could really see was **red**. Fortunately, now that he was outside, in the dead of night, pretty literally, he didn't go deaf from sound bouncing around him, never more than a few feet away.

Odin panicked for exactly two seconds. Certain his MP5A5's magazine was empty, Odin jerked the gun around so he could see into its ejection port, on the left side because the gun was a left-handed model, then jerked the cocking lever back and looked into the gun. He would've, anyway – a live round shot out the ejection port and hit him in the left eye.

He'd loaded a double-drum into the weapon. Manufactu**red** by a company called Beta, the C-mag, as it was called, wouldn't let Odin down for about 70 more bullets. He hadn't loaded it himself, so he wouldn't trust his life with the number 70, but he'd keep in mind that possibility.

Again fortunately for Odin, the bullet that hit him in the eye didn't actually hit him in the eye. He was wearing a black Pro-Tec skateboarding helmet. Modernized but essentially the same plastic helmet Southern Californian skateboarders of the 1970s used, Odin's helmet had a pair of shooting goggles with an elastic headband strapped over it. Because of those goggles, when the bullet hit him in the eye, it bounced off. Odin still flinched, though, before he went back to firing the MP5A5.

This time, Odin controlled the gun a little more, and a little better. He didn't let it waver more than a few degrees to the right or left, facing exactly where he was going – O'Neill's final resting place. Probably_ O'Neill's final resting place_, Odin corrected. He was going to beeline it – _with zombies_, he thought, _why shouldn't I? _He'd also made clear to the snipers earlier that he was going to do that, and he didn't want to confuse somebody with a high-powe**red**, scoped human-hunting rifle. Not now, when they were probably friends, anyway. It never left Odin's mind that the police, including Karl, might just kick Odin's ass out the door and leave him to fend for himself.

He didn't think about that a whole lot, though. Listening to his MP5A5's lifeless, impotent brass shell casings tink on the cement walking path toward the station's front parking lot, Odin took in the zombie horde in front of him. He'd definitely carved a path, and he could even see O'Neill's probable resting place, although not well. It was certainly not near the police station, but even if it were, there were a lot of fucking zombies between it and Odin.

Odin ran, keeping the MP5A5 aiming basically straight ahead of himself. He was kind of lucky – most of the zombies had lost interest in the front door and gone for other entry points, so the horde was rather thin around the front entrance. _It won't be after I finish this_, thought Odin. With that in mind, he ran hard, but didn't commit himself so much to the forward motion that he couldn't turn back. He didn't entirely care about his own life, but if he died, Molly probably would too. O'Neill, if he was still alive, definitely would die without Odin's assistance. It would be a long time before the chief would be able to get out of the car safely, on his own, even if he were armed, and…Odin simply didn't want to know how long it might take the zombies to starve to death or something.

Odin got lucky, in a certain sense. His MP5A5's hammer, while deep inside the weapon, clearly clicked on an empty chamber. Maybe it had jammed, but maybe it hadn't, and Odin had emptied the – he'd hoped – bottomless C-mag. Odin got lucky in that he wasn't in a spot wherein zombies' hands were mere inches from him. They were feet away, but that felt like miles compa**red** to the proximity he'd sha**red** with zombies not 2 seconds beforehand.

Odin nearly stripped the MP5A5's insides just to remove the C-mag, but then realized that would be really stupid. He took an extra half-second to press the magazine release catch, behind the magazine and in front of the trigger guard, then slip the drum out. The weapon's cocking handle was locked back. _It _was _empty! _thought Odin…just before he felt like crying. It had taken less than 20 seconds to empty the C-mag, and it held 100 rounds, if not a few less. He'd definitely felt over 70 rounds go off, although he lost track about there. He had three extra magazines for the MP5A5, but each of those three was a standard-length magazine…which held 30 rounds.

_I'm gonna hafta conserve ammo and aim carefully like a _mother_fucker_.

With that sentiment in mind, Odin slapped the weapon's cocking handle down much harder than he needed to, then raised the 7.53-pound German killing machine, took an instant to plot his next move – "straight forward," basically – and then opened fire.

It felt like 4 seconds later when Odin reached the squad car O'Neill might have been in, or might not have been in. Odin didn't know how much time actually passed by, but he didn't need to know, and didn't care to. Whatever amount of time had passed by, there was an endless horde of the undead advancing slowly on his position. He didn't have the ammunition to kill them all, but they were endless, so that didn't matter, and much more important to his mission…he couldn't see over them. He was a few inches away from tall, but, as his luck thrust upon him, most of the zombies weren't. Rather, they were at tall, or beyond it. Odin could make out the top of the police station's atrium, though, and that would have to be good enough.

The MP5A5 had emptied sometime before he reached the car. The closest zombies would be on him in about 5 seconds, so he had time to reload, although he didn't like having to do it, especially because that meant admitting to himself that he only had some 47 percent of his ammunition left. For the submachine gun, anyway. He had two sidearms and a throwdown piece, plus a few knives, but…if he had to ditch the MP5A5, it meant that things were going downhill mission-wise.

One slap of a bolt later, Odin mowed down the closest few zombies with a quick, highly-controlled 10-odd round burst of 9x19mm hollowpoints, then turned to the squad car. There was a person lying in the back seat, and nobody in the front seat. Odin hoped to God, or the fates, or whatever else controlled the world, be it fate or math or Christopher Walken or some large bunny rabbits, that the person in the back seat was a perfectly human O'Neill. If it weren't, or if it were O'Neill but he were infected, Odin would be so pissed off that he might as well just die. In doing this mission, he kind of signed his life away. _Maybe I shoulda just killed those…four? cops at Molly's place and not come here_, thought Odin. _Or not gone on this fucking mission. O'Neill's not worth it, whomever he is._

Odin almost shot the back door's handle before it occur**red** to him that the easiest way to get through a "locked" door was to check whether it was locked. He paused for another four or so heartbeats, feeling smart as he remembe**red** that police cars' back doors were always locked from the inside but not the out-. Then it occur**red** to him that it was more important to complete the mission than to feel cool for knowing something most people knew anyway.

The door opened and O'Neill's head snapped up, making eye contact with Odin instantly. He was probably alive – zombies didn't move that quickly.

_Fuck me, is there a fast zombie? There better damn well not be! If there is, I quit!_

"You're alive," said O'Neill, confused.

"Shut the fuck up. We gotta leave _now_," said Odin firmly.

Sitting, slowly and gradually as if an incalculable amount of walking dead people _weren't _all around them, O'Neill sta**red** for a second. Maybe he wanted to lace into Odin for swearing at him, telling him what to do. Maybe he was still a little shocked about everything. _I would be_, thought Odin, before it occur**red** to him that he should probably just shoot O'Neill and say he found him like that, saving his own life.

"Sorry," said O'Neill, standing. "Gotta spare rod?"

Odin took stock of the situation, but knew what he'd say already. He let the MP5A5 clatter and pop away the lives of maybe 15 reanimated dead people, then handed O'Neill the weapon and said, "You know how many gay jokes I can make about that, right?"

O'Neill looked at Odin, something in his eyes reminding Odin that the chief had about 30 years and half of a foot on him, then took the MP5A5 and checked its chamber. More than certainly, a bullet was in there. Odin handed over the last spare magazine, and O'Neill said "Thanks."

Odin jerked out his sidearms. In his right hand was one of impostor-O'Neill's underlings' guns, the 12-shot, .40 S&W SIG-Sauer P229 Elite – the same gun Odin originally pictu**red** killing two of impostor-O'Neill's henchmen with, what felt like ages ago. The gun still felt small, but it also felt a lot better than nothing. In Odin's left hand was the cool tall cop's 9x19mm Luger, 15-shot Beretta M9, but the weapon had been adjusted to perfection and it would've felt just as good in his right hand, too.

"Let's go!" said Odin, turning around.

For exactly 1/3 of a second, everything was nothing. Odin couldn't think, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe, sure as hell couldn't eat or love or even see. A zombie was inside of a foot away from him. Perhaps a day ago, it had been a beautiful woman. She had a slight soccer mom look, but Odin never would've called her that. Wearing a sweater Odin didn't know what to call, but one similar to a cardigan, over a simple faded yellow-flowers-on-white sundress, the woman looked pretty good. Odin didn't really take any of that in, though. All he could see was the death and defeat in her eyes, and the hunger. Her skin was gray, but tarnished with black, and she looked a little like an unwrapped mummy. Her hair was white and falling off. For all the 1/3 of a second he saw the woman, the only portion of Odin's mind not consumed by terror remembe**red** something. He was watching the 1989 film _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_ with his mother. This was the first time he'd been brave enough to watch the end, when the evil Nazi guy drank from one of the many false Holy Grails and aged far too quickly, going from his 50s to something far past dead, a skeleton. The makeup effects weren't great, but Odin didn't know that, he'd never seen a person past-dead. Young Odin believed that whenever he shut his eyes, whatever blank space was in front of him would be replaced by that dead man when he reopened his eyes. Except his mother held him, explained it wasn't true, but that she'd be there for him if it was.

The soccer mom-zombie's face exploded and something tore at Odin's left shoulder.

A sniper had taken a potshot at the woman and hit, but the bullet had gone through the woman's brittle skull and grazed Odin.

Odin gla**red** at the sniper for about half a second, then raised both his pistols and fi**red** eight rounds before he knew what was happening.

What was happening: He was near death, where "death" meant an insurmountably large gagglefuck of zombies. Odin was also near a police chief named O'Neill…and Odin didn't know what O'Neill was doing.

Odin took a second to cut down all the zombies around him. With his level of experience gunning down zombies, plus whatever experience he'd had beforehand…that he didn't remember at all…it was rather easy. In seconds, the P229 ran dry and its small, blocky slide locked back, but he'd killed quite a few zombies in emptying it. He'd have maybe 4, 6 seconds before any zombie could get to him.

Odin unlocked the P229's current magazine, carefully but hurriedly pocketed it, then turned to look at O'Neill. O'Neill almost ran Odin over.

"Just go!" said O'Neill, passing Odin. Odin was proud of one thing he'd done in preparation for the mission – he had his extra pistol magazines in an open magazine pouch on his loading-hand's hip. That way, if he had to reload quickly, he wouldn't be slowed by opening any damn pouches; he could just yank them out and get them near the magazine well they'd rest in, in the same motion. Odin's left arm did that motion, two fingers busying themselves with a fresh P229 magazine. It didn't take much of an effort to flip the $40 piece of metal around and slip it in the gun.

Odin almost – no, he couldn't control it, not with this kinda energy coursing through him. Odin said, "'Ey, fuck you, buddy!" Odin released the P229's slide catch and it went forward, locking with an unreasonably loud metallic snap. _At least it's reassuring_, thought Odin, turning to follow the police chief.

O'Neill laughed, the submachinegun in his burly, grey-hairy arms clattering loudly. Odin followed, doing a combat reload with the M9 because he had a chance. A combat reload is a reload of a weapon that's not empty. Odin released the M9's magazine. It probably had three bullets left; it felt too heavy, as it abandoned the weapon for the ground, to have two, but too light to have five. It might've had four left, and Odin felt awful just getting rid of it that way.

Odin just tossed that line of thought out. If he was going to feel guilty about anything, it would be when he was inside the police station and holding Molly again, with at least one gun near him. He didn't even like guns that much, they just made killing stuff easier.

Odin jerked one 15-round M9 magazine out with his reloading-hand – right-hand – from its respective mag pouch, and it found its home pretty soon.

O'Neill paved their escape path. Odin didn't know exactly what the chief would want him to do, so he did what he'd hope O'Neill would for him, if their roles were different. He picked off zombies close to O'Neill's sides, ones O'Neill missed, and made damn sure to stay close to O'Neill. If Odin were more than a few footsteps away from O'Neill's back, the zombie horde O'Neill's MP5A5 pushed back might enclose, separating Odin from the cop. Odin would probably be fine, but O'Neill only had about 45 rounds for the submachinegun, and if he got too far from Odin, but not close enough to the front door's riot team, he was pretty much fucking dead.

A few times, zombies got close to both of them. The horde around them was so close, Odin pretty much always heard hungry, inhuman moans better than his own gunfire, but he had too much adrenaline in him for that to really get to him. Because of that, it was no shocker when a zombie got close, but the first time it happened it shook Odin a good one. It looked like – and Odin didn't know how he knew it – a friend of his who taught people how to play the guitar at a music center near Biskind. He had long black hair, he was always really, really nervous around people he didn't know, and he was basically really cool. Odin reminisced about…Matt? instead of shooting Matt, and Matt got a hold of Odin. For a very short time, which felt like forever despite that, Odin felt two claws-of-life-type things squeezing his shoulders. He'd worn a heavy, definitely-not-police-issue Kevlar vest, and, for whatever reason, slid two level IV ballistic strike plates into it, so Odin definitely didn't feel how cold Matt's hands probably were…but he could still see into Matt's eyes. He looked blind, or at least, his eyes looked really weird. Odin couldn't remember having been that close to a zombie. Not since Darryl, anyway. One look into a zombie's eyes and he'd felt something in him change. When Odin looked into Matt's eyes, that thing shifted even more than it had when Darryl awakened it. Also, Matt's breath smelled horrible.

Odin maneouve**red** his right arm carefully around so that it would point upward, from under Matt's chin.

Odin fi**red**. This took place within about two seconds, and Odin was walking throughout. O'Neill's pace was faster than Odin's plus-Matt pace, but at least Odin was moving.

Odin felt four other zombies closing in – this's the scariest thing that's ever happened to me – even as he watched Matt's face cave in. The hollow-pointed .40-inch bullet Odin's P229 delive**red** left a teeny hole in the bottom of Matt's chin, but then became sort of a cone, mushrooming outward. Matt's brain and skull plooped out the top of his head as his eyes sunk too far backward. That and the way that both Matt's previously-full lips had been ripped off somehow would stick with Odin for a long time.

Then Odin was running again. He shoulder-pushed through two zombies who were almost directly in his way, then shot another that threatened to close the path in front of Odin. Odin was about four steps away from O'Neill. That zombie, in fact, had its back to Odin – it was going after O'Neill.

It didn't make much progress, though. Odin put a bullet, care of his borrowed Beretta M9, through the back of the tall man's head. It left through his right eye and made a nearby female zombie's hair flip up into her face. The tall zombie toppled into another. It'd been lunging toward O'Neill. Although completely late, for whatever reason, it was still lunging, from maybe 8 feet behind O'Neill. Its weight was almost entirely forward by the time the tall zombie fell, making it fall straight onto its face. Odin took a running bound over it, launching himself accidentally almost into the cop in front of him.

"Switch places," said O'Neill. Odin swapped out with O'Neill at the front of their two-person line, knowing why, even as O'Neill said, "I'm reloading."

Odin heard telltale metallic snaps and clicks for about a second before he remembe**red** he kind of needed to pay more attention to the 90-some degrees ahead of himself than the 180ish degrees behind him.

He recommitted himself to the fight, primarily ahead of him.

Seconds later, Odin and the snipers accidentally created kind of a zombie-vacuum – for about 10 feet, there were no zombies at all, but Odin and O'Neill were about 20 feet from the police station's entrance. It was weird. Odin assumed zombies closer than that had chosen to go for the riot team and that zombies further than that had gone for him, but it was still really strange to see a gap like that, when before, Odin's entire world had been moaning undead. He'd hardly even been aware that there was an up or a down – just "dead stuff." That and gunshots, anyway.

One second blur**red** into another, and Odin, his arms jerking back every half-second or so with additional gunshots from the two pistols he was carrying, lost his sense of self


	11. disclaimer

**Osmund Bigwood's**

**BIOHAZARD**

**DISCLAIMER**: The author owns no _BioHazard_/_Resident Evil _copyrights, but doesn't care who does.

This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Other names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, as are those fictionalized events and incidents which involve real persons and did not occur or are set in the future.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Any instances of nonstandard spelling, grammar or punctuation are hereby declared intentional.

The characters and events in this novel are my own.

This novel is set entirely within the canon _BioHazard/Resident Evil_ universe with the exception of the following: SD Perry's novels, the movies by Paul WS Anderson, and the novelizations of those movies which I haven't read.

* * *

_(BioHazard/Resident Evil releases by U.S. release date and title.)_

**games:**

_Resident Evil _(1996, Capcom Production Studio 4)

_Resident Evil 2 _(1998, Capcom Production Studio 4)

_Resident Evil 3: Nemesis _(1999, Capcom Production Studio 4)

_Resident Evil: Code Veronica _(2000, Capcom Production Studio 4/Nex Entertainment)

_Resident Evil: Gun Survivor _(2000, Capcom Production Studio 2)

_Resident Evil: Code Veronica X _(2001, Capcom Production Studio 4/Nex Entertainment)

_Resident Evil _("REmake") (2002, Capcom Production Studio 4)

_Resident Evil: Gaiden _(2002, M4 Ltd.)

_Resident Evil __Ø_(2002, Capcom Production Studio 3)

_Resident Evil: Dead Aim _(2003, Capcom Production Studio 3)

_Resident Evil: Outbreak _(2004, Capcom Production Studio 1)

_4 Resident Evil _(2005, Capcom Production Studio 4)

_Resident Evil: Outbreak File #2 _(2005, Capcom Production Studio 1)

_Resident Evil: Deadly Silence _(2006, Capcom Production Studio 4)

**movies:**

_Resident Evil _(15 March 2002, Paul WS Anderson)

_Resident Evil: Apocalypse_ (10 November 2004, Alexander Witt)

**novels:**

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy (1998, Stephani Danelle Perry)

Resident Evil: Caliban Cove (1998, Stephani Danelle Perry)

Resident Evil: City of the Dead (1999, Stephani Danelle Perry)

Resident Evil: Underworld (1999, Stephani Danelle Perry)

Resident Evil: Nemesis (2000, Stephani Danelle Perry)

Resident Evil: Code Veronica (2001, Stephani Danelle Perry)

Resident Evil: Zero Hour (2004, Stephani Danelle Perry)

**movie novelizations:**

Resident Evil: Genesis (2004, Keith RA DeCandido)

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004, Keith RA DeCandido)

* * *

**Dorothea Lange** (Please see p. 1 **– Ed**.) 


	12. twelve

**11:51 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

It surprised Odin so much that he even got to sleep, lying with two beautiful woman who loved him as though he was, when he woke up, after hardly having slept, it caught him by so little an amount of surprise, he felt like he hadn't even slept. What did surprise him, however, was that about 4 seconds after he awoke, that damn air raid siren went off again. Nobody seemed to notice, despite the amount and variety therein of people around him.

He took a deep breath. Almost everything in him shouted that he should stay on his back, stay adoring how great it felt to have Molly mostly on him and Marion partially on him, and go back to sleep, but, for the 99 percent of his being that shouted he stay there, there was one percent that disagreed, and that one percent was so persuasive that it got him up. He tried to peel Marion off him, and her arm not only replaced itself but took up more space than before when it did. Because of, that Odin didn't even bother trying with Molly. He slid forward, feet-first, on his back. They'd made a pillow with the one blanket they got – Odin was responsible for dispersing that kind of stuff, and took one for them last. Because there was _one _for them last, after everybody else got one. Marion would've tried to sleep with him and Molly anyway, but when that opportunity came up, she said they'd have no choice but to substitute body warmth for blankets'.

…Odin had to admit, out from under the two women, he felt much less warm. He didn't realize they'd make that much difference.

Everybody seemed asleep, at least in Odin's night vision. He could see pretty well, with one or two dim, warm lights helping him, but they were hardly helping, so maybe some bodies that looked asleep weren't. Some people were just kind of sitting there – it was hard to tell how many. The gym had a few full-size basketball courts' worth of space in it, and so many people it was nearly full. The whole city must have been there; Odin probably wouldn't have noticed if the entire Chinese army was in it. One person had definitely not sat still since Odin had first seen them come in earlier that day, and one other person had been in a sitting position, pretty much catatonic, since Odin got there, except for one time Odin was pretty sure she sneezed.

There were two uniformed police officers by the closest entrance/exit double-door, more or less lounging, in the kind of metal folding chairs that would turn a shapely butt into a gross skin-pancake. One of them was asleep but the other looked pretty alert, playing solitaire on something handheld that threw a pale blue glow onto his bearded, 40-something-year-old face.

Something inside Odin told him to get his knife out; something that would call for it was going to happen. Something bad. No, it didn't tell Odin to get his knife out; it _made _him get it out.

Knife out, Odin kept walking, like he didn't have a knife ready in his hand or anything. He put it in a pocket, and put his hands in his pockets. If the cop looked, Odin could take his hands out his pockets and wave, clearly not carrying a knife. If something awful happened, the cop's peripheral vision still wouldn't say "That kid's advancing on you with a knife!", and Odin could get it out faster from his pocket than from in his crotch. _After tonight I'm never fucking putting a knife that close to my dick again ever._

Whether the cop saw Odin's knife never truly matter'd, for before Odin would've even been in enough light to be noticeable, a flesh-**red**-and-muscles-exposed catlike _thing _appea**red**, rounding a corner that put in front of it the gym. Its speed instantly dropped from what looked like a run to a near-crawl. A sneak. A second one appea**red**, like they were operating in tandem. It also snook along. They moved a little like cats, but they looked like they'd been human at some point – like they were people who got whatever that zombie disease – virus? – was and who reacted awful damn funny to it. Their skin had fallen off, leaving muscle. They looked like they'd shrunken a little, or maybe it was just that they were actively crawling on all their limbs instead of walking. Their heads were shaped oddly, like they'd restructu**red**. The thing that stuck out to Odin about the cat-folks was that their heads, while thoroughly hairless, weren't muscly-looking or anything. They didn't have skulls at all. Where their skulls would've been was brain. They clearly had jawbones and everything, but no skulls. It first struck Odin as impossible. He wasn't sure how it would be impossible, but that's what his feelings told him. After it struck Odin as impossible, it struck him as kind of easy. If he could get anywhere near them – which didn't look hard – he could just kick them in the head and kill them. He'd hardly have to worry about his aim, as long as he hit upper head.

Looking straight at the cop who was awake, Odin shouted, "Officer! BEHIND you!"

He might've been in shock, watching the cat-folks for about four seconds, or he might've been so in-awe, observing, that he was kind of not in his own body but some motion picture or surveillance camera.

The cop knew what Odin's tone meant. He dropped his handheld thing without hesitation, except to drop it someplace it wouldn't trip him – maybe he'd had that happen earlier today and almost been bitten or something. Maybe he was smart, or maybe he just knew the tone from being a police officer. Whatever the case, his gun was out and he was dropping to a crouch to aim at wha

The first cat-person's mouth opened, but its tongue was so fast that it looked like it came out before its mouth opened. If having a brain exposed directly to hair was impossible, this was just ridiculous. Odin was so taken-aback he just watched as the cat-person's tongue shot out. Odin wanted to think "whipped," and did, a little, at first, but the way it slashed around the cop's throat and YANKED him toward it just couldn't be described amply with a word as weak as "whip." Its tongue moved so fast it looked like it'd been fi**red** by a bow or a crossbow with about 200 pounds of pull propelling it forward. How the cat-person reversed its tongue – the cop in-tow – so fast was too much for Odin to guess at. In one motion, the cop was about 10 feet away from the cat-person, then suddenly at its feet. The cat-person hardly even moved throughout – leaning forward, then leaning backward, like the explosion of its tongue was little more than a playful flick of its tongue, a burp.

The cop screamed terribly, and the cat-person didn't seem to care. Its hands? went for the cop's belly. It had claws, too. Which was just wonderful. Its hands sh**red**ded open the cop's blouse, his armor, without much trouble, and the cat-person's head went for the cop's throat. It bit a big chunk of it out. It certainly got the esophagus, or seve**red** it, which helped Odin a little, because that way the cop couldn't scream anymore. His blood gushed onto the cat-person's face, looking like a not-quite-big paintcan had just emptied upward. After that, thick, rhythmic spurts came out, and kept coming out, but Odin only really noticed the initial burst.

To say nothing of the second cat-person. "Cat-person" didn't seem accurate anymore.

Regardless, Odin broke into a run. He might just get eaten like the first cop, but he was ready to fight the cat-people and the cop wasn't, and Odin was closer to them, armed with his knife. If Odin didn't do something now, the things would move on to the people in the gym, almost none of whom were even armed. Hopefully some of them were awake now, having been shocked awake.

The second cat-person, instead of drawing the second cop to it, leaped straight for the second cop. Maybe it knew he was asleep, or maybe it was just because the cop hadn't offe**red** any resistance.

The first cop's gun was out on the floor. If Odin could scatter the cat-things somehow, and get the gun, killing them would be like shooting downrange at static paper targets. All he'd have to do would be to dodge their tongues, and at a range of over five feet he could, easily. They looked like their favorite attack range was about 10 feet – once they got that close to the cops, they attacked.

Odin headed for the second cat-thing. Either it would be defenseless and just die, distracted by feeding, or both that and a second thing would happen. The second thing would be that the first cat-thing would notice him and leap or tongue-whip at him, and he had a good plan for that.

No.

The second cat-thing saw him when he was about 15 feet away. It wasn't really even feeding yet – the first one was still by the first cop, outside the gym in the fluorescent-lit hallway, eating away like time and space didn't exist, but the second cat-thing was taking a moment to feel out its pray. It'd ripped out the cop's esophagus already. The cop was fighting it as well as a person could – or, as well as a person who would pass out any second now from massive hemorrhaging could. He looked odd doing that, soundless.

The second cat-thing looked up at Odin, leaned back, tensing up. He could hardly see it, but he could see it getting ready to attack.

_Easy._

Odin kept running, but he slowed a little, stood as high as he could.

It jumped a second time. It shot forward like a missile, moving far faster than it should've been able to. In what little light Odin saw it under, he saw its horrible muscly jaw quivering in anticipation. The kind of anticipation something got when it knew it would have to win its prey instead of just leaping on it from 10 feet away, but that yes, it would definitely get its prey. It was probably pretending it might not to enjoy the pursuit more.

Odin wasn't about to go out like some sucka. When the cat/human/brain-thing launched itself, Odin ducked a little, then somersaulted, hard, and so fast that he never really felt the floor. He was just up on his feet again.

He kept running, changing course to go for the first cat-thing. He felt like the second cat-thing was either 40 feet behind him, somehow – it didn't jump that far, couldn't have – or about one footstep behind him, like it whipped its tongue at the floor, caught it, then reverse-propelled itself back toward him somehow.

Odin continued, shutting what the second cat-thing was doing out of his mind for now. If he got killed for that, so be it. He was gonna make the first one his bitch.

The first one must have known Odin was coming for it, but it chose to ignore him for whatever reason.

Just before he got within touching distance of it, Odin felt a stab of panic, like not only would the thing be ready for him, but it would invent a new kind of pain and make him feel that new pain for the rest of his life, then forevermore, like he would live for years, feeling nothing but that new pain, plus the loss of Molly, Marion, and…whatever thing was pulling him forward. It wasn't his powerful love for Molly, or…what was it?

When it hit Odin that if he lost this fight he could lose Molly…suddenly, it was fun. He was going to enjoy killing the two brain-things, because then he would've earned Molly's love, and his right to live, that much more.

_Molly loves me._

He halted right in front of it. This was the only part Odin would be defenseless during, but he felt so absolutely calm, if he would've died right then, it would've been okay somehow.

Nothing went wrong.

Odin's leg seemed to move in slow motion, just like the cat-thing in front of him, with its head down, seemed to be eating the first cop in slow motion. The cop was deader than JFK, but his eyes, open and staring straight into Odin's, made an impression on Odin that he would never be able to shake off.

Foot connected with cranium, and the cat-thing sailed. Soa**red**, even, like the world's most beautiful boat on the world's most beautiful ocean on an impossibly clear, bright day. Time seemed to be stretching out.

Normally, whenever Odin saw something kicked flying from that kick – any living thing, a football, a pillow or something like that – it looked ugly somehow, like whatever it was, it was not meant to be kicked. Something about the way the first cat-thing flew, contorting like it knew death was coming and like it was ready for the meeting, was so beautiful – heavenly? – it made Odin smile, not at this accomplishment but that he had the pleasure of being there to see it.

The cat-thing hit the painted-smooth cement wall Odin had kicked it into, and not even then did time seem to return to normal. Maybe Odin was that full on adrenaline, like sleeping for a moment had refueled him completely.

Odin heard it, but moreso felt it, when the first of the impact damages met the cat-thing. Maybe it was Death knocking at the thing's door. First, muscle tore. It would've had bruises and things like that, had it had skin. Second, bone snapped. It stressed and fractu**red**, but when the cat-thing didn't stop, the bones' crushing didn't either, and then it broke. Then, many of those broken bones, with nowhere else to go, turned inward, piercing and sh**red**ding vital organs.

Time returned to normal. Odin only really noticed one part of the cat-thing's triumphantly beautiful crash into a wall then, and it was that its brain kind of liquefied. It looked like some kind of water balloon filled with little chunks of meat, these harshly inflexible bits of cocaine-white…something, and a lot of viscous **red** fluid hit a wall.

Odin stared for a second as the cat-thing's body flopped onto the floor, limp as a sack of mud, and as the storm of blood on the wall started leaking downward.

Then the gravity of the situation returned to Odin. Inside of a heartbeat without time to think, Odin dashed toward the first cop's gun.

No.

He could see everything about the gun; he had time to, it was stretching out again. The gun was a Smith and Wesson Model 686, a .357 Magnum revolver with a six-round cylinder. It was double-action. It was silver with a brown handle, but the cop, evidently, had swapped the standard S&W grip out with some other kind. Now, it looked rubbery. It was black and it had finger grooves and an extravagant palm swell that promised, "No left-handed person is ever going to fire this gun properly." Which meant…oh. It meant Odin was glad his knife was in his left hand already. The gun, Odin somehow just _knew_, was loaded with six military-load beauties, 125 grain jacketed hollowpoints. They'd zip out the barrel at 1,206 feet per second, and hit whatever he pointed it at with 404 foot/pounds of energy behind it. Not only would the round kill the second cat-thing and five other cat-things Odin shot it with, but it would make a good portion of their brains jelly, and make that jelly splash on whatever was behind the cat-things he shot.

Unfortunately, while Odin darted at the M686, he knew something was up. It was too easy, right? He'd taken too long kicking the first cat-thing. The gun was perfectly loaded and unsafed – he could just pick it up and shoot, not even taking it in two hands. The cat-thing would come to him; why bother taking some fancy stance when he could just stand there and blast?

The cat-thing must have known everything about the M686 Odin did. When Odin realized something was wrong, that whatever was making every hair on the back of his neck stand up like the killer from _Scream _was behind him, he looked up from the M686, into the gym, just in time to see cat-thing tongue shooting straight at his eye.

He did the only thing he could. He didn't really even think about it.

Odin bent over backward and slashed at the flightpath the tongue would have to take to hit his head. It had been going straight at his eye, and, although he didn't realize he saw the cat-thing behind the tongue, judging by how close it was to him, if the second cat-thing's tongue was as long as the first one's, the second cat-thing's tongue would be able to go a foot or two beyond Odin's head.

All his subconscious calculations and guesses didn't matter. When Odin slashed upward, moving his arm like he was chopping at a block of wood with a hatchet as hard he could, at first, it looked like he wouldn't hit anything. The world was moving slowly again and Odin's knife wasn't going to hit anything. He lost hope for what felt like 18 seconds.

At what felt like the 19th second, tongue ente**red** Odin's field of view. It was bent backward a little – it was like the licker actually threw half of its tongue out, and cracked it there. The second half of its tongue would follow the first half, then because it had so much force behind it, wrap around whatever it hit, as it could. Then, as far as Odin could tell, the cat-thing would call its tongue back. If Odin hadn't ducked, its tongue would've wrapped around his throat about three times.

Because Odin ducked, though, the tongue, just before it finished unrolling, met the matte-black blade of Odin's bootknife. The same piece of metal that had earlier tasted Lieutenant Roger's eye and Patrolman Oronefsky's throat tasted strange cat-thing tongue.

Briefly. It went straight through. Either the tongue, however it got that fucking long, had sacrificed tensile strength and became weaker, or it just couldn't take Odin's superhuman strength (joke).

Time returned to normal speed so fast Odin didn't remember standing, didn't remember cat-thing tongue-blood spraying onto his face and bust. As far as he was concerned, once his knife tasted cat-thing tongue, the next thing that happened was he picked up the M686.

In the distance, not 10 feet away, the cat-thing was stumbling around drunkenly. It had a quick heartbeat. Every half-second or so, another strong spurt of blood would come out its mouth and onto the floor at its feet. Odin felt people around it awakening, reacting with disgust, or just staring and thinking "What the fuck is that and why is it screaming?", but he couldn't see anything but the cat-thing, and it was screaming horribly. It sounded partially human in the same way zombies did, but there was a strong animal presence in its tone. Maybe it wasn't human before whatever happened to it happened. Maybe Odin was wrong, maybe it was human.

That didn't entirely matter, though. After Odin watched it stumble around in a crazy-eight pattern, with the M686 in his hand, Odin took aim and squeezed off one .357 Magnum round. The cat-thing's entire head seemed to turn into chunky jelly.

**11:54 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

"It's like, God dammit, why can I never sleep?" Odin said, jokingly, to Molly. Marion was standing behind him – laughing at that – like she wanted to shove her tongue down his throat – not like she wanted to kiss him, like she just wanted to shove her tongue down there. Molly laughed. "Get your VP70 out."

"What?"

"The gun I gave you. It's a Heckler and Koch VP70M. Get it out."

She sta**red** at him for a second like she kind of wanted him to kiss her. For whatever reason, he couldn't. He sta**red** back. She spoke after about four long seconds. "I'm sca**red**."

"I know," he said. "Get the gun out. We have to leave."

She did. He took a step closer and kissed her – he was going to keep his mouth shut, but once his hand got to her cheek – before his lips even touched hers – her lips unsealed, a little. He opened his to compensate, but her mouth still kind of cove**red** his. Tongues swirled, at first, but after a second it was very calm. Much softer a kiss than he expected to get from somebody who opened their mouth so far in advance he could see it. She wrapped her arms around his waist, but focused on the kiss so much she seemed to forget she had hands. His primary hand – the left – caressed her face, rubbed her earlobe softly, stroked her hair. His other hand, filled with the M686, didn't do much, but he kept it busy sliding softly up and down her spine, but so that she wouldn't be reminded, There's also a 2.82-pound stainless steel revolver in this hand. At first the spine-touch made her shiver.

"I'm in love with you, but this's starting to get to me," said Molly.

"What? That we always fight stuff? Are you mad at me?"

"No, it's just…there are zombies outside! I don't even know what to think of it."

"Can you do something for me?"

"What?"

"Odin," began Marion, "I can hear weird noises. We need to go, honey."

He looked to Marion. "We will. I need to know I can rely on Molly." Marion gave him an impatient, nervous look but nodded. Odin looked to Molly. "Promise me, if you can, that you won't worry about what all this means until we're safe someplace."

"I think I can do that." She smiled. "I promise I won't freak out until we can relax."

Odin smiled. She kissed him, mostly a brief meeting between her tongue and the back of his bottom lip. He dragged his tongue along the top of hers and she moaned a "that tastes good!" kind of mewl into his mouth, like she was a little afraid to really respond to him. He looked at her afterward as if to ask why she'd be afraid to respond.

"Are you happy with my promise?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. He looked down at her hands, then up at her eyes, then showed disappointment.

It took her that long. With an embarrassed "Oh!" she reached into a pocket. Odin finally heard some of the noises Marion was talking about as he waited for Molly to get a move on. They didn't sound like the cat-things at all. He glanced outside the gym, but didn't see more than the first cat-thing's bloody semi-explosion mark, two cop bodies and a little bloodspray and flesh where he cut the second cat-thing's tongue into two pieces.

"Molly, you gotta concentrate a little better," Marion said. Molly gla**red** at her.

Odin gave Molly a "Don't" look. Molly was ready.

Odin handed the M686 to Marion. "This will kick more than you'll want it to, but I'm not letting you go unarmed. Got it?" He also handed her the cop's two extra speed-loaders. The way a revolver works is that the trigger rotates its cylinder and pulls its hammer back – or drops its hammer, if the gun is cocked in single-action mode. A revolver's cylinder is just that, and holds, horizontally, however many bullets it can, which with the M686 was six rounds.

"Yeah," she said. "You should keep this." She tried to hand it back.

"No, I shouldn't," said Odin. "I'll take it if I need it. When you get close to one'a the cat-things try shooting 'em."

"Okay."

"Hey, what's goin' on?" some middle-aged man asked Odin, from behind him. He looked pretty good, dressed in a business suit with its jacket and tie missing, except that he was about 80 pounds overweight, his hair was a mess and he looked like he hadn't slept in two days. He also towe**red** over Odin, but his body language said if Odin punched him in the belly, like to establish dominance, the businessman would double over and beg for mercy. Not that Odin was that cruel.

"I think these things got into the police station," Odin said. "You might hafta leave. I'm gonna figure it out and secure the place." Odin tried to focus on the man as he spoke, but it was difficult; with and behind him was a group of about 30 people who looked like they'd met up around when the cat-things attacked, and since organized a little. They were a relatively cliché-all-walks-of-life kind of group, except for two guys who looked like eccentric German fashion designers.

"Okay," he said.

Odin noticed a woman much shorter than Businessman, but almost as tall as Odin, next to the man. She looked like she'd been out on a jog and decided to come to the police station. She still had an iPod Shuffle armband on, but its headphones were gone. She was average-looking. Odin got the impression that 15 years ago she was quite the looker, and that now, she wanted that back. A divorce or some kind of **red**iscovery, maybe. Her body was alright, although her tight, dark pink jogging Capri's and black halter top didn't accentuate whatever her best features were. "Should we lock the doors?"

"Yeah," said Odin. "Good thinking. If any of those things get in you should probably run, though. Take the second cop's gun and the first cop's baton and stuff, okay?"

"Sure thing," the jogger said. "And…thanks."

"No problem!" said Odin, very pleasantly. Jogger smiled.

**11:57 ****pm**** Friday – 13 April 2007**

"I was expecting like eight'a those things to be around the corner," said Molly, trying to walk with her gun ready like she'd seen him walk, or so it appea**red** to Odin. He just couldn't get over that he'd found a VP70M on a police officer.

Heckler and Koch, a prestigious German firearm manufacturer, had made the VP70 – VolksPistole ("the people's pistol"), first edition 1970 – as kind of an experiment with weapons materials; it was the first polymer-frame pistol, and the second polymer-frame firearm after the Remington Nylon 66. In a time of revolvers, not only did it utilize the relatively weak 9x19mm round, but, with a fat bulk of a pistol grip, the VP70 held 18 rounds. HK also made a stock attachment for the pistol. The stock, while kind of rickety and large, also served as a conversion kit; with that special stock, a VP70 could fire bullets in three-round bursts with one pull of the trigger. The bursts had a dazzling cyclic rate of 2200 rounds per minute that would translate to 36 per second the gun were actually automatic. There were two VP70 versions available – the VP70Z (zivilian) for civilians and the VP70M (militär) for military and police personnel. The VP70Z was different from the VP70M in that the VP70Z was incapable of firing bursts or mounting the stock, and was manufactured much longer than the VP70M, which only survived for a few years. The VP70 was a failure – manufactu**red** for 19 years…until HK gave up. And then Odin's head exploded from wondering

_How the fuck did that paragraph just pour out of me?_

"Odin?" Molly asked, waving a hand in front of him.

"You with us, baby?" Marion asked.

"Sorry, I just kinda spaced out," Odin said.

"We could tell," Molly said.

"I really am sorry," he said. "That won't happen again. Not until the dead stop walking, I mean."

The women laughed. "You're so funny," Marion said. "I really missed that."

"How do you mean?" asked Odin.

"Well…you never take anything seriously. You're sensitive, so it's not like you'd make fun of it if my parents died or something, but…you can kinda just switch like that," Marion said. "I know you get down sometimes, but normally, if something kinda bugs you, if I'd say something funny, or if you thought of something funny, you'd just be back _on _again. I love that."

"Keep in mind _she _loves it too," Odin said, pointing to Molly. _To her c__**red**__it_, thought Odin, Molly didn't sneer or do anything else like that, but she could have.

"I know," Marion said.

"It's really okay," Molly said. "I mean, no, I won't give him up – ever – but I don't really expect you to understand…what happened to him."

"I wouldn't either," said Odin.

"That's good, cuz I don't," said Marion. Odin realized the situation they were in and kind of tuned out of the conversation. He looked all around them, listened carefully for any approaching threats. Surprisingly they were pretty safe – nothing attacking them, nothing on its way to attacking them. He didn't consider putting his knife away, though. "I mean, I love you enough to really…not try to ruin what you have." She looked to Molly. "What both of you have, I mean. You're a really cute couple and I respect that. But…he's the _same guy _he was the last time I saw him. Which was Wednesday, actually. And…it hurts."

"I'm sorry, Marion," said Odin. "I really do love you, but it's like…I can't restart."

"It's okay," said Marion.


	13. thirteen

**A/N (edit: 11 September 2012):** Finished proofreading this a lot today. I'm going to at least try to do the same for everything else.

Anyway, it's not totally done, and I need to cut it down in a buncha spots, but I wanted to swap out the old for the new b/c of a ton of changes I made. Went over, proofed, tried to catch typos, rewrote some. Very tired now. Please let me know what you think of it! =] (There's some violence/action, though I didn't do it very well, and a lot of detail, most of which I need to remove.) Like?, dislike?, suggestions?, turn-ons?, turn-o — . . . actually, just turn-ons plz ty ;)

* * *

**midnight Saturday, 14 April 2007**

they reached the armory. Odin expected a lot of different things, like for either 15 zombies to be standing at the ready as if planted there, or for a few of the cat-things to be waiting there just to piss him off, but none of the night's horrors made good on their promises — gunshots, screams, explosions, howls; noises they heard on the way to the armory — when they arrived. All that Odin saw over the counter in the armory, other than lots upon lots of guns in really boring functional wood and plastic racks, and magazines and boxes of ammunition, was a drab-looking guy of around 30 with a depressed-looking mouth, very slight lips, a shadow-beard from waiting too long to shave and empty eyes. He had very short blonde hair buzz-cut about the last time he'd shaved, so it had grown out some now.

"I need guns," said Odin. "Lots of them."

"I can't help you," said the armorer, with the practiced kind of bo**red** contempt anyone who hated helping people would have. His name was Drake Vasques, which Odin already knew, but he didn't remember until he saw the VASQUES of nametape over the left breast. "I'll need authorization."

"I don't give a shit," said Odin. "Just give me _my_ guns. They're . . . mine."

"I'm sorry, but I can't!" Unless it was an act, Drake was alarmingly exasperated and angry already, and kind of inc**red**ulous, like it was _just so taxing_ to shift a couple feet while already standing. Like there was an entire line of police officers on the other side of the armory exterior who'd already requested weapons, and were getting impatient. Odin didn't see reason for Drake's stressed tone, though, because it was totally unearned and irrational and stupid in general, and the hallway was empty except for the four of them, and because he'd learned when returning his weapons with O'Neill earlier that Drake had mostly just been hanging out in the 2F lounge, and not fighting zombies like Odin.

Odin looked at Drake contemptuously for a few seconds —

punched him in the face, hard, a massive lead-hand straight jab; then hopped lackadaisically over the partition and into the armory. Who needs doors.

Odin had pulled the punch, but still hit Drake pretty hard, square in the nose, a very easy spot to break, cause pain, make bleed. It would hurt, but wouldn't bruise over his eyes. Drake was on the floor & holding his face.

"What the fuck!" exclaimed Marion, enjoying Odin's aggression, surprised, and laughing so hard she sounded like she'd drop the M686 revolver in her hand.

Drake moaned, holding his nose, on his ass by the partition. Odin tuned Drake out of his mind.

"Look out for those cat things . . . " Odin said, firmly, and trying not to take long to find the weapons he owned — the USP45 Compact Tactical with his grips, his threaded barrel and sights; the bloody-handled Beretta Cougar M8045F with odd insignias on the grip-panels; the Glock 22 that felt like it'd been through a war although, most likely, it'd discharged less than a magazine of bullets today. He also looked for the weapons' magazines.

"Why'd you hit him?" asked Molly. Marion, Odin noticed, was being a good trooper, occasionally glancing back at Drake, then looking away and laughing and trying to look like she wasn't laughing at the wound with blood seeping out of it and through Drake's fingers, and so on, but Molly . . . wasn't; completely focused on the world inside of the armory.

"Don't feel sorry for him," said Odin, finding the USP45CT and the Cougar M8045. "He's having a rough time. That oughtta snap him out of it. Also he's a shitbag."

Molly turned around, upset, and maybe believing him.

There was a table by the partition Drake might've done paperwork on. Odin looked that way; it was overflowing with paperwork, magazines on reloading ammunition, pencils, pens, a couple of ready-made stamps for the precinct and the armory and armorers specifically, staplers and the like. Odin shoved every bit of it off the desk, angling so the stuff would hit the wall-corner between the table, and where the gun racks started, and fall under the table. That way Odin could set the guns and stuff down there without anything in their way.

He found boxes of .45 ACP rounds — hollowpoint, although not the excellent Imperial-measure 185 grain JHP+P rounds he'd been using, and a huge amount of boxes of 9x19mm ammo, all hollowpoint. He couldn't even count how many were 9x19. He'd planned on putting what boxes he could find on the table for bagging with the guns, but now that he found so much he went "fuck it" and started planning part two — grabbing whatever guns he or they needed, then revising to keep what would work, rather than just weigh everybody down a ton because he wanted to keep all of it for, y'know, stuff.

"You guys have any preference on weapons?" Odin asked Molly and Marion. "Like, power or capacity or shotguns or whatever? . . . " He trailed off.

"_Power_, baby," Marion said, not looking at him; not knowing what it meant; liking it.

"And Miss Molly?" Odin asked, going over things, and trying to do so so quickly he didn't have time to look up and see his good lady Molly's reaction. He felt Drake getting up and glanced to him. Drake looked like he wanted to apologize, but Odin still angled part-toward Drake incase he was going to revenge-attack or something.

"I don't know. Between the two."

Odin grinned. Then he looked to Drake. "You okay?"

"Yeah," said Drake. With his nose stuffed, he sounded kinda funny. Still bleeding. "I'm . . . I just . . . I dunno, it's easy just to do what you're told. I don't think kids like them should get guns, but . . . apparently you're good."

"I know," said Odin. He meant it about the "do what you're told," but at least one of the ladies assumed he meant about "good." Then: "Just be yourself!" really pleasantly, smiling big. Then he decided to get corny and used a gruff-yet-buttery-movie trailer voice: "Now help me get some fuckin' guns." He sort of pulled a fist inward like they'd won something.

Drake smiled. "What do you want?"

**12:23 am Saturday, 14 April 2007**

Odin was going to make Marion carry their heaviest ammo bag to try to suggest that not even an ass as fantabulous as hers would make him come back to her, but then Drake took it. Odin shrugged, then kept watching Marion's ass, then looking away, then back to it. It was excellent. And his mind changed tracks away from it eventually.

Odin had to admit having a few guns, and spare magazines for all those guns, and spare rounds for all those guns and magazines, and not having to conceal his boot knife or anything else, felt pretty good. The solid weight of his small but sturdy new submachine gun — one that for all the time it'd been in the armory had not been used. Which was odd. — was eerily reassuring to Odin, like it was okay the undead were surrounding the building, somehow, just because he could blaze the 50 rounds his gun's normal magazines held, very much at the ready, away in about three seconds.

It'd been too long since they saw any of the cat-things, or zombies, or anything else weird, Odin thought. Or was concerned about. With Molly, Marion and Drake, Odin was walking to O'Neill's last known location, the main conference room, and when it hit Odin that the place was the kind of quiet and unoccupied it got when someone was walking into a trap, the weird, futuristic-looking but introduced in the early 1990s matte-black FNH P90TR in his arms suddenly didn't feel like much of a weapon. It wasn't that his gun was the smallest of his group's primary weapons, it was that he got the feeling some other bigger monster had come through the place and cleansed it of all the cat-things . . . so that the new monster would have all the people inside for itself. That made the 5-pound, 2-foot-something-long P90TR feel measly.

"Do you get the feeling some new evil monster's gonna come around that corner?" asked Odin, looking at his gang. Molly was on the other side of the hall from him, with Marion behind her, and Drake behind Odin acting as rearguard.

"Yeah," Marion said. She wasn't shaking or anything, but sounded terrified, which disturbed Odin. Like she'd been thinking about it longer than him.

The assault rifle in Marion's arms looked too big for her, because it was. It wasn't all that unwieldy, but anyone could lose control of it in full-auto; the machine's cyclic fire rate was 900 RPM — rounds per minute — or, in more practical field terms, _15 _bulletsa _second_, assuming the wielder held the trigger down that long, which they might just by accident. Different versions and p**red**ecessors of Marion's weapon have had differing automatic fire rates, normally 700–950 RPM. 900 is a lot. And Marion, without training in or experience with firearms, was p**red**isposed to becoming a very dangerous dog wagged by its tail, inverse of how it should work: safety, control, no accidents. And not wagged by her tail. It was a Colt M4A1 (Model 4 Advance 1), more or less son to the Colt Automatic Rifle-15 (CAR-15) Commando of the USA in the Vietnam War, which is a close cousin to the original ArmaLite AR-15, or once it was adopted by the US military, M16, which itself is a microcosm for the entirety of the US armed forces. Later, the M4A1 and M4 were adopted by the US military in 1994, both at the same time. The M4, which is _not_ fully-automatic — a vanilla rifle, sort of a carbine, cut down and revised a little, and the M4A1; fully automatic, intended for special operations.

Marion's new primary weapon was an avatar for the cruel violence of dispassionate chemical reaction. Constructed of high-strength but lightweight and durable material — mostly 7075 aluminum alloy. Its overall and general design had seen revision since the US military first adopted it in the 1960s; it had seen **red**esign and adoption before, and it would see them again. Of all the different versions, as well as other companies' dubiously-legal clones, and of all the weapons in that precinct's armory that day, the first Colt M4 clone Odin had checked turned out to be not only a name-brand Colt, which was surprising, but a fully-automatic _military_ model, rather than what might reasonably be expected: some similar weapon, but not with the additional price of the brand, or considering how quirky individuals could be, maybe brand-name, but certainly not one legitimately full-automatic. You could be a firearms otaku your whole life and _still _never encounter a fully-automatic weapon. Yet there one was. In a zombie-apocalypse-outbreak scenario, such was ideal. Which Odin found remarkable, but said nothing about. He also wasn't a gun otaku.

"M4A1" is somewhat of an overarching or umbrella term for numerous specific versions available from the manufacturer, Colt. Not a new thing, and not surprising; weapons firms often offer a dozen slightly different exact versions of the same thing, even if one is more common than the others; like a two-tone pistol (for example, a silver metal slide and a matte black plastic polymer receiver), varying barrel lengths, left-handed configurations, left-handed configurations with all or none of the other versions' options, various caliber options, compact versions, or, posterity ~ catalog-wise, earlier incarnations of all those tiny variations, and the like. For example, at the time Springfield Armory, "The first name in American firearms," which George Washington orde**red** the creation of in 1777, was making Colt Model 1911 Advance 1 (M1911A1) self-loading pistol copies very much like the very old, but excellent, weapon. It was designed by John Moses Browning, who designed a lot of other weapons, a lot of whose systems hadn't really been bette**red** even by Odin's time, even if by then Springfield was just another firearms manufacturer. Odin kind of hoped to find an "Operator" by them in the armory, but no luck. Marion's M4A1 was specifically and technically a Colt Model R0977, with a flat-top receiver and a removable carrying handle with target-style rear sights atop it, a four-position collapsible buttstock, and the requisite M4A1 three-position fire-selector switch: safe-semi-auto; effective range 500 meters (546 yards/about 1,640 feet), or 600 for an area target, like "them trees over yonder." It was the kind of weapon that in lone-survivor just-scrabbling-by ammo-scarce-type action and survival-horror games would be the ultimate, big ticket destroyer-gun you saved just for the hard normal enemies and bosses. The kind of weapon that could shoot through _schools_. Which isn't realistic, but who cares.

It was manufactu**red**, marketed and sold by Colt Defense LLC, military spin-off of the proud American Second-Amendment institution Colt's Manufacturing Company LLC, founded 1836 by Samuel Colt as Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company and based in Hartford, Connecticut. Colt owns the whole weapon family, M4 and M16 and AR-15 alike, but didn't invent it — that was just a few people at a downed-aircraft-crew-weapon design company called ArmaLite, under the Fairchild Aircraft Corporation, in the 1950s. Between then and now most improvement and **red**esign has come from American soldiers' field feedback.

While a compact, lightweight weapon, Marion's M4A1's accessories made it look a great deal bigger than it really was, like an average-sized hardcover novel with a desk attached to it. Marion — well, Odin — had added a sight to it, made by the Swedish company Aimpoint AB, generically called a reflex or **red**-dot sight, because when you aimed with one you put a **red** dot over what you wanted to kill, as opposed and at close range better than the iconic open "iron sights," like Patridge, or diopter, or aperture, etc. It was one of the numerous weapon sights the US military employed; reliable and rugged but expensive, a CompML2. Its optical system is technically described as a passive **red**-dot collimator reflex sight, this one parallax-free, with 1x magnification (aka "none"). It's compatible with every generation of night-vision device.

Within modern US military usage and firearms-company terminology, by design, M16s and M4s have 80% parts commonality — "interchangeable." For the same reason, they're of exactly the same caliber, 5.56x45mm NATO, which is the same size as but not 1:1 interchangeable with the American .223 Remington (same dimensions, but not totally identical, as well as having some differing finer points) and use the same standardized specific cartridge-load of the round, NATO's SS109: full metal jacket, steel core, adopted 1982, designed to penetrate armor; or in the USA, designated: Cartridge, Caliber 5.56 mm, Ball, M855; 62 grains in Imperial measure, marked with a green tip. Similarly, the US military designates the Aimpoint CompM2-series as the Model 68 Close Combat Optic (M68 CCO). A newer sight by the same firm, the CompM4, is planned to replace the 'M2, as with individual rifles the M4 is to the M16, eventually.

Marion's M4A1 had apparently shipped to the precinct with a Knight's Armament Company (KAC)-made accessory rail properly and securely installed, replacing the stock plain, synthetic black forward handguard. Odin checked. He was paranoid. Both the modern M16 and M4-series' rail systems are manufactu**red** by KAC. Apart from, as Marion put it, the really cool, vaguely military-futuristic reflex sight, Odin had also added a vertical forward handgrip, which Marion thought was badass, a visible **red** laser-sight activated by a pressure pad on the foregrip, and a blindingly bright multiple-LED flashlight, for light and incase maybe zombies went down that easy. Odin had conside**red** some other things, but eventually got frustrated and moved on because he was eating time and needed to get to other weapons for other people. As per the above, options and accessories like the **red**-dot sight Odin mounted on Marion's weapon, and all the other things he conside**red**, operate via standardized mounting platforms — accessory rails — whose incarnation in NATO states is known by at least a thousand names and unfortunately easiest to relate by official standards-designation: NATO's is "STANAG 2134," the US military's is "MIL-STD-1913," and, more generally or colloquially "Picatinny rail," for its namesake Picatinny Arsenal, basically a large US Army R&D facility in northern New Jersey. Odin had also attached, because why not?, a couple of bayonets, two unidirectional flamethrowers, a surface-to-air missile launcher, a radar dish, and a squadron of robot sentries with lasers for eyes. Just kidding — but Odin really had put entirely too much thought into it all. Which he eventually noticed, and became horrendously embarrassed about. For example, after all but firing the weapon a bunch of times to zero its sights for a given useful range, just so he could be sure he'd properly attached and aligned the CompML2 sight, he'd compulsively thought of, then located and attached, a name-brand Aimpoint _light __filter_, to the front end of the weapon's reflex sight, which was designed to prevent light reflecting off it. Its name was an unregiste**red** trademark, too: it was a "KillFlash™" Anti-Reflection Device (ARD). Registe**red** trademarks use the circled-R symbol: This BioHazard is Freaking Awesome®.

He did a few other things, but in describing to Marion how awesome-ized he'd made her weapon, Odin didn't get nearly that far before her eyes had glazed over. He'd intended to go further, over all of it. Not a good plan. Once she started to fall asleep on her feet he'd shrugged internally, and felt inc**red**ibly stupid for getting so carried away with both awesomizing the weapon and then, worse, bothering to tell her about it. So he cut himself down harshly, then as he rebooted his brain to stop thinking about gun and military stuff, absentmindedly said something about how her weapon was a "wealth of acronyms" which made everyone laugh. A small reprieve. He didn't quite get it, and couldn't remember what he'd said anyway, and blushed with shame. His dearest Molly had hardly ever seen him blush, except sorta during sex when the both of them were flushed with arousal and love and the embrace of connection and acceptance. Then Molly hugged her arms around Odin's neck and shoulders and he became happy again.

Before he'd started it all, he'd had made sure to tell Molly and Marion alike about common weapons' fire rates — semi, burst, full-auto — and suggested Marion keep her M4A1 assault rifle on semi-auto unless something really big got close, like within 50 meters. Because with the assault rifle in semi-, 100 rounds would last forever. Marion's M4A1 was automatic like Odin's P90, but bigger. His ex-girlfriend's ~ weird amnesia thing ~ WTF brain ~ fugue ~ gun ~ assault rifle out-ranged his. And . . . seemed weird somehow.

"I do too," said Drake. He'd wanted to use an M4A1 too, but for balance, Odin suggested he take a shotgun instead. Later, he'd just found one as they were walking through the precinct, so it all worked out. But, without knowing that would happen, Drake had gone with a shotgun; he took the best the station had, a Benelli M4 Super 90 gas-operated, modular semi-automatic with a fixed stock, which coincidentally was the winning response to a solicitation from Picatinny put out in 1998; the M4 Super 90 was called by the US military a Joint Service Combat Shotgun Model 1014 (JSCS M1014). In the civilian market, its equivalent is an M4 Super 90 Tactical. There are several variants available, like one with a collapsible stock which is illegal for citizens in the US to own and an M4 Entry with a shorter (14 inch) barrel — the normal/default length is 18.5 inches — and ones with full rail accessory systems by KAC. It comes in black synthetic or desert camo color patterns, and with pistol-grip tactical or grip-in-stock buttstocks — standard is black and the pistol grip. Each model has a 3-inch barrel for use of longer-than-normal (which is 2 – 3/4 inch-long) magnum shotgun rounds. Not coincidentally, it has a Picatinny rail atop the receiver. It's the last shotgun US armed forces will accept with an integral magazine; "Integral magazine" is a fancy but correct way to say that its wielder would have to load, one by one, its ammo — shells — into it, as opposed to something more sensible or handy, or easy or _not_-really-time-consuming. Shotguns with integral tube magazines, like the M4, typically have the barrel on top and magazine on bottom, which can look like two barrels stacked, but isn't. The M4 has it that way, as have most all shotguns used in most all countries, or their militaries.

Molly didn't really react at first, but when Odin looked back to her, because she was both awful nice to look at and staring at him, she smiled brightly. That contrasted her new outfit and gun so much that they almost disappea**red **to him. Everybody had holsters, vests and big bulky firearms now. Exceedingly good weapons, better than could be expected, but kind of bulky, or bulkier than pistols and revolvers (conside**red** different categories of firearm) anyway. Molly went with the second-smallest gun in the group, a sub-machinegun like Odin's, but one, of course, bigger and more intimidating-looking than his. He thought so. He'd begun to suspect some kind of strange penis envy, watching her load the gun and acclimatize a little to it back in the armory. It was a Heckler and Koch GmbH weapon, just like Odin's reclaimed USP45 Compact Tactical, and it looked just as violent as his USP45CT, except much more overt. It was an MP5K-PDW, created in 1991 for USAF personnel who needed compact weapons, based on the MP5K Odin had rescued O'Neill using, with a folding black synthetic shoulder stock added where before the MP5K series didn't have anything there, and among other things, a threaded barrel too. _Definite penis envy. _MP5Ks were a younger brother to the original and still-in-use all over the world MP5, a long, iconic heavy submachine gun whose service life began in the 1960s, designed from 1964–66, and depicted very favorably in a lot of action movies such as _P__**red**__ator_ (1987, John McTiernan) (also horror, alien, sci-fi) and _Die Hard_ (1988, same director. Coincidence? Impossible!) and a great deal more modern ones, MP5 standing for "Machinenpistole" (German) — "Machine Pistol" — and 5 being one more than four and two less than seven (not really, it was just their fifth machine pistol model). There are also a great many variants of it, the MP5K being one, not to mention its various incarnations and improvements, and the MP5K-PDW being only one more. There's also a sound-suppressed version, for example, called at base level an MP5SD, MP5 being the same and SD being a HK abbreviation of the German "SchällDampfer," or "sound dampener" ~ "suppressor" — integral, although plenty of other HK weapons have extended barrels threaded for attachment of suppressors. Integral suppressors are better but not detachable. The "K" in MP5K means "Kurz" — short — and, simple as that, an MP5K is a short MP5. The PDW suffix stands for "Personal Defense Weapon" (the American branch of HK, Heckler & Koch USA, did it), and, needless to say, Molly's MP5K-PDW was much bigger than Odin's P90, although noticeably less thick and it didn't look as cool just in general.

Before Odin could ask himself how he knew all the useless trivia blather, which was probably only ever going to be of use at this one moment, and even then it wasn't all that useful, he saw three things round the corner that he'd asked about before, but not the kind of things he'd expected. He didn't notice doing it, but, as he observed the things, his P90TR came up along with his head and mind. It'd been in a relaxed, safe carry before, but then its sight outline was just already in his vision, ready. Sight picture. Like that, he could aim and fire fairly accurately at such range.

The three things were the same kind of . . . thing. He couldn't think of what to call them; Odin wanted to think of them as animals, and he probably wouldn't have been wrong to, but they felt so distinctly unnatural, he couldn't get himself to apply the label. They looked a little like baboobs, a little like gorillas — because their upper bodies were huge, and because they were about that tall, and walked like that — and a lot like reptiles, and . . . "boobs" . . . just went, and bounced and jiggled, through his mind, coincidentally at the same time, possibly because he loved breasts. The things had kind of a lizardy face, and although they were maybe 30, 40 feet away from Odin, they looked scaly, too.

"Shoot 'em," Odin said, firm and imperative but not shouting. He almost fi**red** before he spoke. Before he could blink he'd peppe**red** a 10-round — give or take a few — long burst, into the leftmost gorilla-lizard-boob. He concentrated on its center of mass, but was pretty sure the bullets wande**red**. He was _pretty_ sure because he really, really wanted one or two to wander into its eye socket or something, and wishful thinking like that was okay for the moment. It was odd to look at them — he couldn't see any necks, at all, if they had them. Maybe that was how big their upper bodies were.

Now they were sprinting at Odin and company.

"Center of mass," Odin tried to remind all of them, as soon as he let go of the very comfortable P90's oddly comfortable sort of horizontal. The hall roa**red** with gunfire, echoing, popping and tearing. He could feel it more than hear it. All the dust and floor-bound miscellany got thrown into the air somehow, especially that right in front of him, within view of the P90's barrel. His ears, pounding, felt like he'd just stuffed them with something very thick, and like they were at least half a mile further inside his head. _Earplugs would've been a good idea._ He felt familiar with the "lots of automatic gunfire" sound, but it was still pretty unpleasant. He still might permanently lose hearing. The gorilla things were splattering deep-**red** and sometimes black — What did that mean? — blood everywhere around them, as if they were exploding from within rather than being run through with projectiles traveling along basically one plane. There were a few 12-gauge shotgun slugs from Drake's M4 in the things, as well as Odin's P90 burst, then another, maybe 20 of Molly's 9x19mm MP5K-PDW bullets, and a few less than that of Marion's M4A1's 5.56x45mm.

During Odin's second P90 burst the leftmost one fell, hard. He felt like somebody else had shot it — sometimes when he shot things with other people around, he felt like he'd been the only one to hit them. Odd feeling. He almost took a heartbeat to think about that, but instead retargeted, landing his P90's standard illuminated reflex dot-sight on the middle gorilla thing as gunfire popped and clatte**red** and roa**red **away into stucco and tiled cement, as small but thick clumps of gorillas' flesh tore off their bodies and as blood spatte**red **and sprayed their vicinity. The gunfire hadn't stopped the things, but it had slowed them down. The first one to fall had gone down maybe five feet from where it'd started, after the gunfire started.

The second to drop fell a few feet past there, and as it fell, then eventually came to a rest, its head bobbed and flapped around — in a few independent pieces, destroyed, torn and ripped, its neck an erupting volcano of blood, but just for a moment. Odin was the only person on the planet to see it. He didn't think he'd killed that particular gorilla-lizard-thing, but he might have. A shotgun slug would've done much worse to the head than tear it. It might've removed and separated. And Molly's 9x19mm bullets, although hollow-pointed, would be too impractical to pour enough of in the same small, quickly-moving area — maybe she got enough in, but it was more likely she didn't. Eh, whatever, it didn't matter.

With four streams of gunfire — three of them just about constant — focused on it, the third gorilla thing succumbed less than a second after its teammate.

"I think we should call those gorillas," said Odin, feeling so strange from the forceful percussive noise that he wasn't sure if he was awake or dreaming for another minute or two. So bothering to say something so inane and trivial seemed almost like a good idea. Odin was checking his P90's 50-round, very long translucent horizontal magazine. The gun had a weird loading mechanism that involved turning its, which seems complex, but the damn thing did it and did it _fast_, and Odin wasn't going to complain until it jammed. According to his knowledge, that might never happen. He really liked the brass-ejection system — instead of doing the norm and throwing them randomly and hard out the side, threatening to hit anyone nearby in the face, or land in their clothes at a fold, or whatever else bad, Odin's P90 sent its many empties directly downward, through its partially-hollow pistol grip, meaning that if firing left-handed, he'd never ever have to worry about an empty singing an eyeball or anything. Which made him happy in a way he didn't understand but which seemed kind of dorky. His current magazine still had plenty of rounds stacked and orde**red** and looking very sharp in it, more than half. He had five more full mags in a drop-down ammo pouch on his right leg. He thought for a second. He needed to pace himself more, except in an emergency; but he could make that ammo last a very long time. Excellent.

"Sounds good," Marion said.

Molly, looking around, rubbing at her ears with her MP5K-PDW slung down her side, said "What'd you call those monkey things?" like she hadn't heard anything. Odin wonde**red** uncomfortably if he'd missed other things somebody'd said.

"The ones from the gym? With the — exterior brains?" Odin had to speak, then pause a little, focusing on listening to ambient noise. He wasn't sure if he could hear or not.

He heard Drake laugh.

"Yeah," Molly said.

"I was calling them cat-things, but that doesn't sound right," Odin replied. His head hurt, it seemed like, a lot more than it should. But he could hear.

"They use their tongues, right?" asked Marion.

"That's what she said," Odin said. Drake didn't seem to notice, but Molly and Marion laughed, looking please. Odin sta**red** at Marion for a second. "You're gonna say 'licker,' aren't you?"

She sta**red** back at him for a second. "No, I was gonna say 'chickenhead.'"

Inward, Odin thought something like, _Oh, these girls, trying to act black._ But he'd instantly giggled. So had everybody else. Odin said, "That's really fun to say. How's everybody feel about 'chickenhead?' I could say that again if you didn't hear it."

Smiling, Molly said, "I like 'licker.' It's easier. And it makes me think naughty things."

"I don't care," said Drake, a little blunted, or maybe just not hearing Molly as he cut her off.

Odin grinned at Molly, but looked to Drake to acknowledge him as well. Shrugging, glancing back to Molly, he said, "'Licker'll be so much easier for double entendres, too . . . " thoughtfully and earned a few laughs. "It sounded like I just said 'lick her!'" Giggles, and a delightful "I'm gonna fuck you" look from Molly. He was somewhat pretty sure Marion gave him a look like that too, but he told himself that he'd imagined that and that was just her face, or something. Odin looked to Marion and asked, "You wanna go with 'chickenhead?'" It was fun to say it sort of c**red**ulously.

One of the gorillas rounded the corner behind them. It wasn't a noisy animal, but its mass seemed to just carry air with it. You could almost feel it coming. It must've weighed hund**red**s of pounds. As soon as it came around the corner — it sucked being in such an enclosed environment. Things could be waiting just around every corner there, and they'd never know. — Odin and Drake's guns snapped to shoulders. About five bullets seemed to go off at the same time, and its head ceased to exist. Odin wasn't sure exactly where and when, just ceased. A geyser of blood came up from the neckhole as if from some other world, hit the ceiling as if lobbed from a bucket and hitting all at once, and also spraying and leaking onto wall and floor as the poor thing's body slumped, then fell, to the floor. It was horrific, but so explosive and bombastic it was funny. A couple of seconds later it wasn't, and had gone back to awful, but by fortunate coincidence, they all decided to ignore it just before then.

Drake laughed. Odin heard two lovely female voices laughing — Marion and Molly, he saw when he looked back. He didn't need to. He knew each of their voices. He'd never forget them. He just wanted to look at something beautiful, not just hear it. He looked to both of them. They both smiled at him. There was about a second of competition between them, a look, a certain cessation of laughter; Odin noticed his mistake. He should've made some clear gesture of "friends!" toward Marion. So he went closer to them and rekindled the funny, glancing back and pretending not to notice the ugliness of the huge gout of monster-aberration blood, on the ceiling, starting to drip and rain back down, plopping as it hit the floor in differing random amounts, some thick, some thin.

"Actually I liked 'licker' better," Marion said at some point, Odin wasn't sure exactly when. Marion was still giggling.

"That thing went out like a _bitch_," Molly said, with a little Southern accent creeping into her voice, making what she said go someplace past surpass "funny" and into "hilarious" territory. Odin desperately wanted to possess her and plant one of his hands in her hair, on the back of her head, and kiss her not exactly hard, but a little hard, and deeply, and stroke her tongue with his, and nibble on her amazing full lips just a little, and start to kiss down her neck, a — Odin caught himself there. Molly saw the look in his eyes even during her laughter and blew him a kiss. They had blood and gunpowder on them. Gross.

Odin used his non-gun-hand and blew her a kiss that way. She'd only used her lips. Which was plenty, and beautiful. She seemed to enjoy his similar but different gesture, like he had hers. They smiled together. Then Odin looked to Drake and said, "We should keep moving."

Drake grinned a little, said "Yeah." Odin wasn't sure if it was condescending, like "horny kids," or not.

"We're going with 'licker' for the brain things," said Odin as he looked around, wary of getting attacked again, and mentally noting not to let his libido start taking over, not in a strange undead-creature warzone, and not in front of old people. The direction they were walking felt right, and even though the two of them had met with Odin punching Drake in the fucking face, Odin found himself instinctively trusting Drake, who seemed very much over the broken nose and blood and pain. Odin shrugged; then again, there were two hot, young, tight-bodied women next to Drake.

"—and 'gorilla' for those things," added Molly.

"That's right, Molly," said Odin, happy and sincere but a little bubbly and goofy too.

"I love you, Odin," she said back, in a cutesy voice.

"I love you too," said Odin. He meant to add some goofy endearing term, or a lisp or something, but found himself unable to.

They came to a corner. It was odd for Odin to no longer have to do this alone, having had to before, fighting the lickers, the zombies outside, and the three cops inside, but it was kind of nice. Molly cut the pie of not-getting-ambushed or shot caution and deliberation around the corner, Odin keeping her right side secure, Drake and Marion covering everywhere else, and Marion overlapping fire with Odin so he wouldn't shoot her if she crossed in front of him, Odin complementing Molly with the corner. Nothing there. Nobody laughed self-consciously, which was good. If Odin was with trained soldiers or police, they'd do the same thing; exercise caution, un-self-consciously. It was kind of silly, but it might save their lives.

After that they kept moving straight, mostly just as careful, occasionally waning a little, mostly without noticing it, toward the chief's last known whereabouts.

**12:27 am Saturday, 13 April 2007**

Those being last known whereabouts they reached safely, except for how disappointment and disconcertment met them. The route to the conference room was safe, and but for one critter, two bodies and a lot of spray-pattern blood, it was empty. Neither body was O'Neill's, and they were very close to one another.

Odin's group's entrance wasn't clean. They stormed the room. Its doors were open and lights on, which was a reassuring — knowing that if they stormed in, something sharp wouldn't be waiting immediately in there to eviscerate them, with nowhere to hide — but not life-affirming or anything. The bodies were right by the door, and they looked like the critter had come in there, maybe by the ceiling — both doors seemed fine — though who knew how. As it appea**red**, the critter had caught one of the cops, his gun not close enough, completely by surprise, but didn't kill him. Maybe it wanted to bring him to a different environment and play. Then the other cop tried to evacuate his friend and failed, to his death.

Looking at the critter, Odin didn't feel surprised in the least that it — evidently — had killed two adult police officers. It was looking straight at Odin when he stormed in, and it watched him for at least two seconds before anything happened. They felt like more than two.

It looked a little like a skeleton, a little like a person — like maybe it had looked more human before, then been murde**red** horribly by some kind of radiation that burned all the human away from it — and a lot like some kind of insect. Odin knew almost nothing about insect species, despite their amount, and probably biomass, being astronomically greater than his and humanity's. It wasn't that close to him, so he didn't get a fantastically clear look at it, but that was okay with him because once he'd killed it once or twice over, then he could look, assuming he didn't shoot it so many times he destroyed its torso or head something. (Hit locations matter.)

Odin didn't idly look at the critter for long, although its odd insect/skeleton face — eyes locking with his?, curiously, or that was how it seemed — was certainly a sight to be seen. A horrific one, too, with bright **red** blood sprayed all over it. The two cops', probably. Something about it just seemed cold and black and dead and violent and efficient, unrestricted killing, or maybe just death, machine. Like it was more a function or machine than something alive and making choices and weighing options.

Odin trained his sights on the monster's dark, **red** and black and green, infected or . . . worse . . . center of mass and held the trigger down as soon as he got into the room . . . then snapped out of whatever trance the thing put him in.

Molly came in about then. He was the first in the room and he stepped to the right. She screamed and recoiled, bumping into the wall, luckily clear of the doorway. The creature-thing-horror was crawling around on the table, kind of slowly, closer to the end of the room than Odin, but now it wasn't doing anything other than being shot. He didn't mind that, but he had to assume it was some kind of trick, or ploy, or something else bad and deceptive. So he didn't stop shooting. Working to tear it apart.

A second later Molly opened up on it too. Odin had nearly yelped or something like that too. They were both less than 10 feet away from it, Odin a little closer. He could've fi**red** his P90TR from the hip and hit it in the head without variance. It was dead before their third room-breacher, Marion, even got into the room. Seconds. Felt like a lot more than that to Odin. He let breath out slowly.

"Close the doors," said Odin, checking the P90, assuming it was somehow more than merely empty. He'd fi**red** with disregard to ammunition, and numbers. That seemed about right: From when he opened up on the thing, the insect/skeleton, and when it dropped, blood pouring out of it from some large number of independent separate entry wounds, like 20 or 30, and more blood leaking and spraying out its back from probably as many exit wounds, he felt like he'd fi**red** the whole magazine into and through it, impossible as it was to empty a fully-loaded magazine from a partially-loaded one. _How did you get 50 from 30 or 40?_ Odin prodded, at himself, but then let go of. He was almost disappointed to learn he'd fi**red** less than 30 bullets, or somewhere around there, but that somehow balanced out when Molly checked her magazine to find it completely dry, expecting it not to be. Odin shrugged, then partial-hugged her. They both had ballistic vests and some gear on to carry ammo, magazines, some first-aid kit, and the like, so they couldn't go nearly as skin-to-skin as they actually wanted. So pressing close together would have to do. Later . . . more. They embraced as much as they could, then spaced out.

A couple seconds later of definitely checking the ceiling for any more of those things, should they have been able to conceal themselves somehow, Drake closed the doors, and Odin said thanks then asked Molly, "Did you run out, for that?" He meant the current magazine.

"Yeah," she said. Because her first two MP5K mags were hooked together, she'd already recharged the menacing-looking black gun, and pretty quick too. "I don't think I'm good at keeping track of this."

Odin grinned. "You'll get better, baby" he said, sweetly, then added some melodrama and goofy flippancy and said, "You'll have to."

She giggled. "Come kiss me." She meant it.

After a quick once-over of the room — and yeah, the insect/skeleton had come in through the ceiling, through the broken over-door window thing of the double-doors they'd just come in through — he did, but once he was close enough to kiss her, she went further than he did, and faster. He was surprised almost to the point of shock, but appreciated it in general, and loved it in particular. He kissed back. He met her and her pace and emotion. It was surprisingly intense, but not like showy, if anyone was watching. Molly hardly ever kissed him like that — he wasn't sure what "that" was — Actively? Passionately?

Seconds – a lot of exchanged saliva – later, Odin broke the kiss and said "This might be a bad time to makeout."

She laughed, looking only at him, unwavering. "No. I'll kiss you absolutely anytime I want to, and I'll _like _it."

He giggled, quickly said "Aren't you supposed to say _I'll_ like it?", then said what he actually felt, "Awww," in the most empathetic and melodious form he could get his voice to, adding, "that's so sweet of you to say!" He smiled warmly.

Molly smiled back warmly. She giggled, he hoped at how cute he meant to sound, instead of how silly he probably did sound.

"Odin?" Odin heard O'Neill's voice say, from the other end of the room. He'd come from a closet with a few other cops. Odin hadn't paid attention to anything but Molly, consciously, since she opened her mouth, and led his open with hers, but, he realized now, he'd heard Drake heading over that way.

Odin peeled his hands off Molly, got his P90 back into one of them incase something horrible surprised them again, turned around.

"Yes, Chief O'Neill?"

O'Neill looked to Molly and back at Odin as if too busy to say something about hormones and teenagers, then said, "I'm . . . sorry. I should'a killed that thing."

"That's alright," said Odin, a little like it was silly to apologize for it. "I don't think I've fi**red** one'a these before" (gesturing, safely, to the P90) "and . . . it's a dream, now that I've had a chance to learn it."

"I really didn't expect you to use that," said O'Neill. "Or . . . say that." He had a confused expression, but quickly shrugged it off and continued, "I've had that for damn near 10 years, and nobody ever even wanted it."

"I think outside the _box_, man," said Odin. There were some laughs. "You just gotta _understand _. . . " There were some more laughs.

O'Neill grinned a grin that only someone who'd had to deal with that kind of person could grin. "Oh, right, that," he said. "I . . . I lost a few good cops to that." Odin noticed a few other police officers behind O'Neill, talking with Drake. He also noticed that Marion had gravitated back toward him. He was a little disappointed.

"And?"

"Sorry, I was reminiscing," said O'Neill, who didn't seem to notice Marion. "Do you think we can secure this place and stay safe here? For . . . the duration?"

"No," said Odin. "It's pretty, and I like it, but . . . I dunno, it feels wrong to me."

"'feels wrong to me too," said O'Neill. "We should organize a meeting with everyone and figure out what to do."

"Yeah," said Odin. "I think the first priority's securing the . . . people in the gym," said Odin, hesitating because he almost called them "civilians," "then . . . whatever. I'm kinda itchy to just leave because I know this place's gonna fall, bad, but I won't before they're safe."

"Well I appreciate that," said O'Neill. Molly rubbed at Odin's arm like to congratulate him. Odin liked that. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Odin, smiling. "Just to establish: I'm not surrendering my guns again."

O'Neill grinned. "I wasn't going to ask you to."

"That's good," Odin said.

"You wouldn't believe how good this guy is," said Marion, putting an arm on Odin as if that would put him on a podium — above O'Neill. "Have you seen those licker things?"

O'Neill said, " . . . No."

"Well . . . they're fast, and they attack with their tongues."

Something rammed the other double-door entrance into the conference room. The one Drake and four other cops were next to.

Odin didn't really react to it, but the women next to him did. Marion jumped at the crash, and into Odin, so hard he almost fell from it. The only thing that kept him standing was Molly, who shriek-gasped and did almost exactly the same thing on his other side. Marion rushed in, "He killed two of 'em," to complete the thought, stuttering a little, and squeezing Odin's arm, hard.

Another bang on the other door.

O'Neill grinned at Marion.

Odin started taking his P90 off, looking toward O'Neill. O'Neill turned it down. "Hang on," he said to O'Neill; "You two" (to Molly and Marion) "—Get on the other side of the table and watch that door. Don't get close, and keep in mind they might attack through the ceiling."

Another bang.

"Got it," said Molly, who like Marion didn't particularly want to leave Odin, and also didn't want to split up their group. She felt safer being right by two other people, even if as locked together they'd all be a lot less mobile.

Odin continued, "Marion, stand behind Molly and little off to the side. Molly, use the table as cover."

"Got it," said Molly, in almost the same tone as before. She and Marion ran off. Marion jumped on the table and ran over it, Molly ran in front. Marion got there first, then debated with Molly on where by the table Odin wanted them to take cover.

In the meantime Odin pulled one of his two sidearms out. He had two, to fire double-fisted or whatever else he might need to do, and he pulled the one for his left hand for O'Neill. It was a Kimber Eclipse Custom II, sort of a high-quality target pistol and Colt M1911 clone. It could be chambe**red** for any of a wide variety of common pistol cartridges, but the only one the police station had was a 10mm version. Odin liked that, rather than felt limited, especially since he'd already seen the cat-things at that time and knew that these weird monster things got tougher than zombies. A lot tougher. The 10mm round was a lot more powerful than, say, the 9x19mm round, which was vastly more common. Odin selected the Kimber in 10mm — overjoyed that the place would have something that obscure (he'd only ever _seen _Kimber pistols three times — which he didn't know how he knew, but which he suddenly felt pretty sure about) — then took all the 10mm ammo the place had. Which wasn't much. Surprisingly, the place also had three whole spare magazines for the Eclipse, all in excellent, factory-fresh shape, in individual-purchase plastic baggies that'd never even been opened. Odin immediately regretted giving the Eclipse Custom II to O'Neill now that he'd thought about how powerful the 10mm round was, whoops, but at least O'Neill looked good with it. As in, competent. O'Neill was putting earplugs in as Odin got near. That was a good sign too.

Two more bangs, in that timeframe. The door was beginning to splinter. It looked like it was made of wood, and it didn't sound too solid.

"What's this?" asked O'Neill, pocketing the two spare magazines.

"Ten-millimeter. It holds eight rounds."

_BANG _— loud — and a rather impotent-sounding _splinter/crunch_. Wood starting to give.

"_Ten _millimeter?" asked O'Neill, checking the gun, as if Odin had somehow said that instead of _nine_ by accident; _How absurd_, thought Odin; _That is right out_. The Eclipse II's magazine was loaded full, and it had one extra round in the chamber, which was Odin's doing because he'd been headed into a combat scenario, and might not have time to rack the slide to extract and chamber the first round. Instead, he rende**red** the gun a lot less safe to carry, but much quicker and easier to bring to bear if he had to kill something but couldn't get to another weapon or whatever. One somewhat unsafe but common practice in firearms to, for one thing, increase ammo capacity: The user inserts a fully-loaded magazine, then either cocks the gun, or if it was locked open releases the slide forward, which also cocks it — thereby chambering the first round in the mag — and finally loads one extra bullet into the magazine, thereby making it whatever the mag held plus one. As in, now the Eclipse Custom II in O'Neill's hand held nine rounds instead of magazine's mere eight. Odin only liked the practice if he knew he was heading into combat; the plus one was pretty much insignificant, but if he was going to extract a round from the mag anyway, why not give himself the extra margin of it.

"Yeah," said Odin. "Used it before? . . . Or any 10-mil."

"Once," said O'Neill, then with a smile asked, "You ever used a Bren Ten?"

**Bang**-_bang_-splinter/crunch.

Odin grinned. "Possibly, but if so, not for a long time." He said that honestly, but felt like . . . felt strange. Like it wasn't him speaking.

"I'm impressed," said O'Neill, rehearsing the weapon's safeties quickly before the fight, and smiling, kind of like they weren't talking about machines designed to kill human beings.

Thud.

Odin looked toward and for thud. It'd come from behind him, and if there were strings between him, or just lines to illustrate spatial relationships, then Molly and Marion's position, and where the thud came from, would form a sloppy but recognizable triangle. Roughly equidistant.

The "thudder" was one of the bizarre, creepy, and just unsavory-looking insect/skeletons. Odin wasn't sure — didn't even have an inclination — how it got in. His instincts said it'd jumped from _something_, but he whip-panned around and saw the tail end of its thud, and it looked like it had just fallen straight down. _Could they climb on ceilings? Or . . ._

Whatever the case, Odin opened up on it. It sounded like some kind of earthquake occur**red** within the room. Ripping and tearing, deep resounding, and very quickly-repeating. Molly and Marion were already firing by them, both of them in short, controlled bursts, which Odin ado**red** them for, for various reasons. One was because they might lose control if they just slammed their triggers down and held 'em there. After firing a burst, Odin glanced and checked to O'Neill and said "Watch my back."

"Yes sir, civilian."

Odin grinned, but couldn't risk returning the joke, or trying to one-up or whatever.

He turned, and checked visually over the room on his way back to bringing his P90 to bear on the creepy-crawly thing, incase there were others now, or zombies or whatever; He saw nothing else. Not that there couldn't be any, just that he didn't acquire any new threats. Odin fi**red** another just-a-little-longer burst of the P90's powerful but small bullets, a series of 900 RPM and very loud, percussive, earthshaking explosions, with the bullets themselves breaking the speed of sound, for all the good that did in a less-than-20-foot range before they impacted target. Odin might've missed once . . . or not. Most every shot seemed to be on-target. As he picked away at the bizarre monster's flesh, he lost track of however many bursts Molly and Marion had fi**red**, but by the time he thought that, the insect/skeleton thing was dead, no momentum, no will coming from within; just slumping downward, with some of its own body ripped and sprayed apart from it, blood leaking and pooling under it with a couple of more important arteries spraying — but, since its heart either had or was about to stop working, not for long.

Odin looked back to O'Neill, Drake and the other four cops. They were all armed, but with, as far as Odin could tell, only small-caliber self-loading pistols — rather than, for Odin, ideally, like with 12-gauge riot shotguns, or heavy-caliber sub-machineguns like Heckler and Koch UMP40s, even though that was a little improbable. Two of the men's weapons were Glocks, which encouraged Odin: Excellent weapons, fairly high quality, usually pretty consistently performing well because they were mass-produced and well. Every Glock pistol looked just about exactly the same as every other Glock pistol, so while they could've been very weak — like, 9x19mm or .380 ACP (also known as 9x17mm Short, and sometimes "Short" in German, "Kurz") — they also could've been fairly strong, like 10mm, of course, or .45 ACP, or the un-time-tested but apparently good new Glock in-house brand, .45 GAP (Glock Automatic Pistol).

As soon as Odin had the police officers in view, the door exploded into the room, because apparently things were just going to keep happening that way today, and following just after that was the entrance of two of the gorilla things, not at the same time but pretty close to. Odin noticed, for the first time, that when you were very close to them in a pretty small, narrow room, they looked a fuck of a lot bigger and more threatening and deadly. Molly and Marion didn't fire on them, which Odin was grateful for. He bursted one of the gorillas with his P90 — a quick glance at its brownish-looking transparent magazine: He still had plenty of rounds ready to go — and said to O'Neill, "Stay here and look between both doorways!" He had to shout a little, because as he spoke he fi**red** a little. He concluded, "Look above you too."

"Got it."

Three of the cops were on the other side of the door from Odin, plinking at the gorillas. Or Odin felt that's what they were doing; to be specific to the accepted definition, plinking meant sort of shooting things, like empty tin cans or gallon-milk jugs, for fun or amusement, almost necessarily with .22 Long Rifle (LR)-chambe**red** weapons. He knew what kind of effects the 5.7x28mm FNH rounds his P90 used had on things, namely tissue, and he knew what kinds of effects the officers' weapons' rounds generally had. For one thing, the longer a weapon's barrel, the more spin — accuracy — and velocity the bullets that went through it got. Odin's weapon's barrel was 10.4 inches (263mm/26.3cm) — pretty good for such a small, tight weapon, and mainly because its design was "bullpup:" the magazine was behind the trigger group, and closer to the user's face, which was more or less a space-saving measure. It made for a shorter weapon because you had to have a buttstock to hold the weapon steady anyway, and having the magazine of a weapon, as with the Colt M4 and M16, before the trigger group meant that however much barrel the weapon would have, it had to start pretty much right above the magazine. The weapon would be longer. By flipping it around, you could have a weapon of the same length, but you could have more barrel. Sometimes bullpup weapons looked odd, sometimes not so much. The P90 wasn't unpleasant-looking, but a little futuristic ~ violent maybe. Odin wouldn't have wanted to use it if he found it repulsive. Unique, yes. But since it wasn't ugly, it was an option; and in a very-much enclosed environment like a police station, where things could pop out of anywhere because of all the rooms and office space and hallways and multiple stories, plus a long fucking magazine (50 rounds), it was kind of perfect. So far the only not-so-perfect thing seemed to be that it fi**red** so fast he'd probably empty the magazine too quick a lot until he got a little more used to it, or stopped freaking out at things' popping out really close to him, like the two gorilla/Komodo dragon-looking behemoths in front of him right then. They were fast, but as forensic evidence would prove, not fast enough. Once in the room, while taken aback a little by the volume of all the gunfire, one of the two gorillas almost got to one of the cops. Drake's M4A1 did an awfully good job of holding them back, apparently tearing through their thick skin/hide/whatever that surface was with aplomb, like Odin's P90 was doing as well; but now, Drake had to reload. He was also firing on full-auto, and his weapon's 5.56x45mm round seemed to be doing a great job of hurting them, but like Odin's weapon it also fi**red** pretty fast on full-auto, and Drake had to retreat and reload.

The first two gorillas in harmed no one.

Odin hop-stepped up onto the table. If he was careful, he could join in on the half-circle of gunfire on the door — on whatever thing tried to come in to butcher them — without anybody getting in Drake or anyone else's way.

"Hey — move back a little," he said, to the cops who might wander into his way. He had to shout a little. But they were way too fucking close. Gorilla-things, or if they used a burst of energy and speed maybe the insect-spider-monkey things too, and probably even zombies or lickers could round the corner, get in the room, and grab the guys before the guys would even realize they were there. Odin could do a lot of damage to them, although he was straight-facing the doorway when facing from an oblique angle would've been a little safer. Not against zombies, though; plus, Odin's more or less marking himself as a target might distract zombies or whatever from the cops who were much closer, and much dumber than Odin, as evidenced by their being much closer for one thing.

"We can't see out the door like that," they said.

Counte**red** Odin, "You have shitty guns and you don't need to."

They backed up looking like they'd cry. It also seemed to occur to them that they should've been a little further back. They were holding a location, not invading someone else's. Also the things coming in to get them had vastly superior, deadly close-range weapons, and if they didn't come from straight back away from the doorway, the cops wouldn't be able to see them until they were in the doorframe anyway.

Drake was on that side too. Odin looked to him. "Drake, get up here with me. Or back up, maybe."

"Sure," said Drake, who probably just hadn't thought of it. He went a little to the oblique of the door. Odin grumbled, but didn't make any noise, because that was a better spot, and further from the door.

Odin checked his P90 — a little less than half-full — and then Marion and Molly's side of the room. They weren't far away, but he wanted to zone the place mentally, and their side might go down, or just pause, like if they all had to reload at the same time. And if they did that, it might also, very quickly, go down, too. A flood of zombies, or a small group of more than two or three of the gorilla things, would be enough to kill them all, or at least start to, with all the humans' ranged defenses down.

"Drake — this side is yours," Odin said, moving back behind Drake: to leave his cone of fire unobstructed, and just not to walk in front of the barrel of somebody's loaded weapon, probably not safed. Odin lowe**red** his weapon, flicked the safety of his on with his firing hand's pointer finger just for — err, safety — and went behind Drake. He kept his weapon's whole muzzle area pointed away and down from everyone else. "I'm gonna help the goiles." In a goofy part-New York part-Canadian voice — "girls." Not that they needed help per se but that it was just them.

Drake laughed, then moved, trading positions with Odin, still loading his shotgun. "Sure thing," he said, exaggerating it a little. His M4A1 — where had he gotten that? — was hanging from a shoulder.

Odin got into position just in time to see four more gorillas come in on Drake's side of the room, and one more insect/skeleton bust on what was now his side, except this time it was from one of the only other doorways in the room.

As Odin realized, the other doorways in the conference room went to two other places, one of them being nowhere (walk-in closet) and a hallway (the one the insect/skeleton came through the over-door window through).

Odin had to be careful, and move up a lot. If his aim wave**red**, his bullets might zip straight into Molly or Marion's head. But neither of them were much good with discipline or control or safety or ammo conservation and they kind of needed a little help — or definitely would, if anything went horribly wrong. Like if either of them got hit, or just a ton of something came through their door. If he didn't take out the critter with them fast enough, or Drake's side of the room needed a lot of help with the gorillas, Drake's side would fall.

Odin held fire. Molly and Marion were fine. He was just worrying. He hopped onto the floor. He'd run behind Drake and position himself so he was looking almost straight at the door. Nobody would wander into his lane of fire, on the gorillas, that way . . . assuming the gorillas never moved, which they would. Oh well. He'd just move around and do whatever he could.

As Odin ran, he glanced back to Molly and Marion. Their critter was dead already, a few bursts after it got into the room.

Odin didn't see it, but as far as he could tell, one of the gorilla things had either jumped into or just tackled one of the cops on Drake's side of the room, and Drake couldn't do anything about it because the thing was too close to the cop: a confused mass of blue and gorilla thing and limbs — and blood now. He seemed to be worrying about the other three, only one of whom Odin could see.

Odin rushed the gorilla on the cop. It had clawed hands, and it was swiping at the cop it was standing atop like crazy. The cop wasn't even struggling. Couldn't anymore. His body — ? — was too bloody for Odin to be able to figure out what happened, but as far as he could tell, the thing had swiped the man's head off. After a second or two Odin located the head, close by; so maybe it'd just kind of ripped the front half of his neck off so blood could pour out openly, or maybe it destroyed his heart or something.

Whatever had happened, Odin didn't actually think about it — he just took a big glimpse of detail in so he wouldn't shoot a human accidentally, or in a rush. Instead, once he had a clear shot — he had to get close enough so that the other two cops on that side of the room were no longer behind the gorilla thing, which put Odin within five feet of it — still pretty much danger-close to the police, and definitely too close to the gorilla thing, although it seemed to be having such a good time with the corpse that maybe that wouldn't be a problem — he just held the trigger down, waving a little — center of mass, upper chest, even head briefly.

It struggled against the bullets, trying to turn, for maybe three seconds, but then it was just overwhelmed. Which was good. It went down and Odin's P90 ran dry — he kept firing as it appea**red** to be falling. Once he stopped firing —

About then, Odin noticed that the only other of the four gorillas he could see was looking straight at him, and also dashing toward him. It'd been slashing one of the other two cops nearby. As it did, the last unperturbed cop on that side of the room, and Drake, shot at it, but one of the gorillas had jumped onto the table, so Drake then Drake needed to deal with that. Once the gorilla got close to Odin, the last cop who could've helped him with it had to hold fire or risk hitting Odin. Oddly, Odin didn't resent the gesture of safety or compassion at all. He would've done the same for the cop, and was glad the cop did it for him. It was just a big risk. And with a pistol, as the cop was wielding, even bigger, because you couldn't align yourself with it, and your arms wave**red** a lot more, without a stock. You might line it up apparently just right, then fire and somehow you're a couple inches to the side and below where you thought you were aiming. Not that likely, but they were in a pretty big, inc**red**ibly loud, firefight, and considering the wall-climber things, Odin certainly felt like death could come from anywhere, and he might not even get to defend himself from it. So he was a little nervous, past the additional shudder of violence and strength that adrenaline was already giving him.

He couldn't tell what was happening with the other gorilla thing, and didn't have time to check on Molly and Marion. He hardly had time to think, much less notice that the gorilla-things looked much more like upright lizards than gorillas, save the massive upper bodies and posture.

Odin's hand snapped to his right-hand pistol, and, unable to reload his P90 quick enough, he thought maybe he should've given O'Neill his backup — fourth? Wow. — gun, the USP45 Compact Tactical (extreme-abbreviation: USP45CT) (Universal Self-loading Pistol), because his Eclipse Custom II's 10mm rounds were much more powerful than the USP45CT's, well, namesake rounds, .45 ACP.

His right-hand pistol was the USP45CT's big brother, a USP45 Tactical. Sounds almost identical. Looks almost identical. Bigger. Longer barrel. It could hold four more .45 ACP rounds than the Compact Tactical, and big enough to accept more add-ons, or accessories. Not that anything other than the magazine size really matte**red** to Odin then.

Odin tore off two rounds as fast as he could, quick-drawing on the gorilla — two just while lining the pistol up with the thing. He was going to aim with it in both hands if he could, but he didn't think he could afford to wait quite that long, so he just got the gun out of the holster, pointed it by muscle memory and sort of estimating where the gun was pointing, and fi**red** —

The first two rounds did nothing to the gorilla except make it bleed. It groaned, though he wasn't sure at which round, and it might not even have been because of that. Odin was surprised at the difference there appea**red** to be, already, between the tiny but high-powe**red** and tumble-within-flesh-ready 5.7x28mm P90's round and the slower-velocity but heavy .45 ACP. He felt like he might just be imagining it. The thing was very close. It must've been at least a little impassioned by that — closer to the meal, closing the deal, whatever.

Odin got the USP45 Tactical in both hands and fi**red** three more rounds — this as he was still bringing it up. He was firing extremely fast. He later thought about that a lot. He knew, but could pretty much just guess, that it would take probably a lot of both training and experience with weapons, probably including the .45 ACP round and weapons that used it specifically as well, to be able to fire and control one of the damn things _and_ fire that fucking fast. As some of the other people in the room who saw or heard him doing it commented later, he fi**red** so fast they thought the USP45T was automatic: like, on a burst setting. A very loud, very quick clatter of dull POPs. (When guns fire, they don't make particularly interesting or exciting noises; they're basically pretty dull. They're just very precisely calculated, weighed, tested, etc., rapid chemical reactions. A spark ignites gunpowder, which explode-burns very quickly, and then pushes a clump of metal through a tunnel — the bullet, the barrel.) The gorilla died, but it had so much momentum in its run that it still skidded and rolled. Odin got out of the way, but even then, one of its arms, just flopping around, because apparently it had been about to strike, sort of landed on Odin's leg. Because of the way it had been about to swing, when the thing lost all conscious control, its arm went backward, and its claws never touched Odin. Just the broad, very densely-muscled side, harmless. It was heavy, too, surprisingly so. Odin dashed to his left, the safest direction — away from the fight itself — just so the thing's body wouldn't trip him.

His perhaps-paranoid instincts said the gorilla wasn't dead, so as soon as he was clear, and glance-checked that he didn't seem to be in anyone's line of fire, he put two more of the USP45T's bullets into it, bullets exclusive to its head. It definitely didn't move after that. But it might not have been about to anyway.

Drake's other gorilla was dead.

"Drake, where's the fourth?" Odin called, looking for it, working on a long pouch's opening tab, so he could get a 50-round P90 magazines out of it and reload the superior, or more effective against gorilla-lizard things anyway, heavy tight black violent loopy-looking little weapon.

"Dead," Drake replied. "It got one'a the guys on my side though."

O'Neill was fine. So were Molly and Marion, except more so.

Odin holste**red** his USP45 Tactical and pulled the P90's empty mag out. He kept that one, rather than just carelessly dropping it to the floor or something, on general principle but ideally to reload and re-use. P90s load from the top with a horizontal magazine, so when he unlocked it, pulling it out, his loading hand was moving away from the gun. Instead of setting the magazine down or anything, he just let it go. It flew away from him, almost hitting a potted plant and clodded against the room's carpet.

"Molly, what's going on with you guys?"

"We've seen two'a those bug things, but they didn't do anything," she said. He got his next P90 magazine out, which was the easiest part of the whole thing because he'd opened the pouch already, pondering: _Hmm. 'Bug thing' sums that up pretty well. Maybe some kinda Latin thing would be better. Striking. Eh, I dunno. 'Bug thing' works._

"Two including the one I shot at?"

"Yeah."

"Good," said Odin. "O'Neill, you doing okay?"

"Just dandy," said the chief. It was a little sarcastic, but well-intentioned, and he said it pretty clearly in such way. "I got to fire your Kimber here a little, and . . . I missed the 10-mil."

"I understand," popping the P90 magazine home — the big spout that fed the bullets downward at the back, the flat bottom of the magazine sliding in under the triple-accessory rail a little, but without challenge to the loader. Most guns don't need to have their magazines slapped at all in for them to be loaded, and the P90 doesn't need that either, but Odin felt better doing it. Felt like he hadn't clicked it in right. Then he pumped the weapon's ambidextrous cocking handle, which was mirro**red** on either side of it. It felt nice and crisp, responsive, yielding properly but not too easily. The gun was ready again. "Drake: any more of those gorillas coming?"

"No," said Drake.

"O'Neill, you wanna take over here?"

"You're doin' fine," O'Neill said, just as easily as "no," but he also meant what he said, and Odin liked the compliment one better.

"Let's go to the gym," said Odin, to those with him. "Drake, take the cops to the armory and start purifying this place. Get whatever O'Neill wants you to for him and those guys too, and some extras, and plenty of ammo. Everybody else, let's." Molly and Marion giggled. O'Neill smiled. The other cops looked at Odin like he was a gigantic flying bat with a pink bandanna on its forehead carrying a double-bass guitar had replaced his face, and like the rest of his body was doing hand jives. To them: "What? You got beef?" He let go his P90 and raised his arms a little, as if to fight. That was apparently not the way they'd meant their collective look.

One of them: "No. No beef."


	14. fourteen

**12:39 ****am**** Saturday – 14 April 2007**

Said Odin, "Dammit. Why's it that whenever I kinda wanna fight there's nothin' to fight?" They hadn't encountered anything but two gorillas on the way to the gym, and those two gorillas were so far away they didn't even start running before Odin, Molly, Marion and O'Neill deaded them. Odin would've been so perfect in a fight, too – he replaced the empty slot of the Eclipse Custom II he'd let O'Neill borrow with his USP45 Tactical, and he put his USP45CT where the USP45T had been. It might be annoyingly repetitious to fire two so-similar guns, but he didn't even care. That line of thought made something occur to him, but

"Cuz you're too good at killin' stuff," said Molly. Then she laughed, along with everybody else.

"Hey," said Odin to O'Neill, "You're clear that you're only borrowing that, right?"

O'Neill looked to the Eclipse Custom II then moved it a little further from Odin and pretended he didn't hear the question.

Muttered Odin, "Fucker."

O'Neill giggled.

And there were the gym doors.

"Just to establish this," said Odin, "if they're all dead at the hands of some new monster, I'm gonna be really, _really _pissed off."

"You had them shut the door?" asked O'Neill.

"Yeah," Odin replied.

"Well it's still closed. That's prob'ly a good sign."

"Good point," Odin said, and then he knocked on the gym's door. "It's Odin, the coolest guy ever," he called, "so please open the door."

A very long moment passed. It might've been seconds long, but to anyone, Odin would've sworn it was much longer than that. Odin heard motion in the room, but it could've been anything.

Then the door swung open. Odin snatched up his P90 and almost pulled it high enough. High enough meaning that once its barrel reached a certain height, he'd just hold the trigger down and pull it up more.

It was somebody he recognized but hadn't really spoken with. Odin didn't know her name but he'd been calling her Overruling Schoolteacher because she seemed like the kind of person, outside of her job, and especially when she was younger, who'd been ignored, pushed around, and who now – being, he guessed, a K-3 teacher – could tell people what to do. She controlled their children, so the parents couldn't guilt her into doing anything, and the children were so young they might not have any concept of bullying anybody around, so they were her slaves, and she could stop anybody she wanted to from being a bully. Odin didn't know her name but she had ugly, been-ponytailed-too-long limp brunette hair that dropped just short of her mid-back, ridiculously big square glasses, about 150 more pounds on her than she needed, and extremely good taste in clothes.

"Hello, Odin!" she said. Something about her body language always annoyed him, but she was as polite to him as she was annoying.

"Is everything okay?" he asked. He looked at her like "Get out of my way so I can see," but not abrasively.

"Yeah, we haven't even been bothered. Oh! Let me just get out of your way here." She moved.

"Thanks, ma'am," said Odin, moving in.

"You're welcome."

Everybody seemed perfectly fine, if a little bored and high-strung at the same time. Roughly a third of the people were asleep. With the lights on in the gym, the place seemed much safer. The two cops' and lickers' bodies were also gone, and their blood trails and splatters were gone.

"Nothing happened at all?" Odin asked Overruling Schoolteacher.

"That's right," she said, smiling pleasantly, like he was about 15 years younger. As far as he'd seen she treated everybody that way.

"Cool," Odin said. He projected his voice: "Is everybody okay in here?"

The normal response – some people's silences meaning yeses, some people spoke. Nobody said anything amounting to a "no" or a "maybe," though.

Odin looked to O'Neill. "Where do you wanna have the meet? This would be fine, but it's kinda stuffy and I get a bad vibe being in there."

"A bad _vibe_." Like a question, but like to say it the way he wanted to, O'Neill would have to punctuate it with a period if he were to write it anywhere.

"Yeah." O'Neill stared at him. "Just answer the question, Chief."

"I guess we should do it in here. It's easy to protect and…nothing's gotten in, as far as anybody'll admit," O'Neill said.

"Yeah," Odin said.

"I get the impression somebody'd say something if…anything bothered 'em," Molly said.

"Indeed," Odin said. She smiled at him. He smiled back.

**1:19 ****am**** Saturday – 14 April 2007**

Nobody was asleep with everybody finally showed up. Odin, Molly, Marion, a few police officers and Drake cleansed the place. There were nine other squads tasked with doing that. After the firefight in the conference room, it seemed, Odin's group had killed all the insect/skeletons in the station that police elsewhere hadn't, and any gorilla groups larger than pairs either broke themselves up or had gotten killed before then. All the firefights after that went by quickly and easily.

Odin even used a Benelli M1 Super 90 for awhile, both to conserve P90 ammo and try the M1 out. The station had one P90 and one of its little sister, the Five-seveN, a pistol which Drake had. When Odin saw the P90, he said he'd kill anybody who dared argue with him over who would get it, but Drake really wanted to try the Five-seveN out. There was very little ammo for the pair, and Odin wanted to keep as much of it as he could incase he had to fight something armored, or lots of zombies at one time. A Benelli M1 is a Benelli M4's grandfather, and it only fires on semi-automatic. Unlike an M4, though, it's entirely black, and doesn't have a goofy telescoping skeleton stock. After the cleansing, Drake retired his Five-seveN and gave Odin all the rest of the station's 5.7x28mm ammo. Odin punched him in the face again afterward, for no reason. Not really.

Odin was shocked when the meeting/discussion ended because he'd been expecting it to go on for hours. He wasn't sure how it came to him, but his memory – what he had of it – told him that meetings of that type were always like that.

The meeting lasted about 10 minutes. O'Neill decided for his cops, and a few of the civilians decided for the civilians, that they'd stay at the police station. There were quite a few of each, and there wouldn't be any safe way to move. Odin decided to leave, though.

And then Odin left the meeting, wandering off with Molly, specifically to get a damn bottle of water in the second floor's lounge. They left most of their gear in the gym, but kept their sidearms, and then skipped away, holding hands.

**1:24 ****am**** Saturday – 14 April 2007**

"Are you really kinda…okay with all this? I keep feeling like you're gonna freak out somehow," Odin said.

"I'm great," Molly said, swinging their arms, "cuz I've got _you_. And you're perfect."

He kept forgetting she could sound so cute, even with the Beretta Px4 Storm he made her take jutting out her hip holster. Odin smiled. She smiled too, like she wanted him to kiss her or like she'd kiss him. He couldn't start leaning in.

Instead: "What do you wanna do next?"

"I don't know," she said, "but I think you're right about this place. I feel like something really bad's gonna happen here. I know I…might die, with everything like it is, but I don't wanna die here. I don't feel comfortable here."

"I thought we should go to Biskind," Odin said. "I know it's not much of an idea, but the only idea I have's to fortify the Rourke building."

"I like it, but why that one?"

"It's isolated, so while it wouldn't be easy to seal off all the doors in and stuff, we wouldn't have all the skywalks 'n' shit to worry about, like in the other buildings. It's completely hooked-up with communication, so we could monitor the news and stuff like that and maybe even use some of the news cameras for surveillance, it's four stories tall, so we could have an escape plan that was like, If the first floor gets breached too badly, we retreat to the second, and stuff like that, until we get to the fourth. If it's _that _bad, and we hafta leave or something, we make kind of a fire escape on the roof. Maybe we could have some kinda ride to that island thing for the childhood…center, on the first floor, then half a little path that goes into the parking lot from there."

"How'd you learn all that since you woke up in the Happenings Room?"

He thought about that, a little nervous suddenly, walking in a hallway in the second floor of the police station empty save for them. "I don't know," Odin said. "Sometimes things come back to me."

"Like how to use guns? Or kissing me _exactly _how I like it?"

"That's just far-fetched," Odin said.

She laughed. "I really do like it," she said. "You don't feel like you just forgot how to do everything. You never did."

"I know." He looked into her eyes as if for a solution. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I know that…some of the people in the gym look familiar, and they look at me like that, but it's like…Who are these people? I know I've met Marion before now, but I don't remember it."

"Is it like that déjà vu stuff at all?"

"Yeah," said Odin. "Almost every moment for me is déjà vu." They laughed.

"Sorry."

"No, that's okay. It's hard to accept that I forgot everything I knew and then woke up suddenly. _I _forget sometimes."

"Well that doesn't surprise me."

"Shut up, Molly," he said.

"Aw, honey, I love it when you call me Molly," she said. She took the hand not in his, put it under his chin and led him to her, advancing on him too, for a smooch.

"I thought you were gonna say you loved it when I told you to shut up," he said, on the way in. She laughed, and the burst of air from her mouth felt odd on his face.

Smooch.

Odin asked, "And how do you feel about _me_?"

"I'm in love with you."

"By how much?"

"I'm _terribly _in love with you."

He grinned.

"Say it back, okay?" she asked.

"I love you."

She smiled. It was the genuine kind, but it was so heartfelt that when Odin gazed into her eyes, the smile looked like it affected her entire body, that her whole being was smiling. It felt pretty good to him, too.

She let go of his hand and put her arms around the back of his neck. When he saw what she was going to do he stepped in too, leading his arms around her waist. He detached himself as much as he could – he enjoyed kissing Molly much better when they moved toward each other slowly, and when she initiated this, she did it pretty slowly. He was glad they'd just reached their destination, the lounge on the second floor; in the hallway he might've felt kinda self-conscious about liplocking. He swallowed and took a deep breath on the way in, at almost the same time Molly exhaled, and then their lips met.

Almost did. He pulled back a little, reversing his momentum. He made sure his lips grazed hers.

Molly opened her eyes and stared into his hungrily. He felt his animal side – which felt like about 5/6 of him – awaken then. He very strongly wanted to rip her jeans off like he was that strong and fuck her on one of the tables behind him until she screamed, to hell with foreplay.

He left one of his hands on her hip, but slipped the other between their bodies and held her face. Before then, she was the image of beauty – hungry, dark eyes, luscious, plump beestung lips with a little moisture on them, perfect, aquiline basic structure, her somewhat-curly brunette hair down, spilling past her shoulders, some into her eyes. Something about the room's lighting captured her so perfectly it was more than perfect, more than angelic. Not even his ugly hand could obscure that.

"I love you, Odin."

And then she made it even better, which he'd been pretty sure was impossible for however long they looked into each other's eyes before she said it. Maybe 10 seconds. He was so used to people looking away after one or two he wasn't sure what to think of that, but it made him a little uneasy.

"You can't say it back?"

"I'm always afraid that the one time I do you're…gonna say you don't love me anymore afterward." It was hard to say that. He felt tears come to his eyes as he spoke, and that made it all the more difficult.

"How could you think that?" Hurt, like she wasn't far from crying either.

"I don't know," he said. "Every time I feel myself about to trust anybody, I notice it and I completely pull away."

"Don't do that," Molly said. "I'm never abandoning you. I'd die before I did."

Was that a hot tear, clawing its way from his eye to beyond?

"Oh, honey…" she said, wiping it off. Something about how she did it just a little too hard made him cry-giggle. "It's okay, sweetie," she said, kissing him softly on the lips and then pulling his head into her shoulder. He didn't particularly struggle.

"I'm sorry I'm like this," he said, holding onto her for dear life.

"No, don't be. I love you just the way you are."

"How could that even be possible?" he asked.

"Shut up, Odin," she said, with a giggle, rubbing at his back reassuringly. He giggled too.

A few deep breaths. A few more sweet reassurances from Molly.

He resurfaced.

Pure loving eye contact, three seconds.

"I'm sorry–"

She nearly lunged forward, lips-first, latching onto his and shoving her tongue into his mouth with a fervor. He had no choice but to match her passion, and it didn't take long to rev up.

**1:38 ****am**** Saturday – 14 April 2007**

_It's almost odd_, Odin thought. When Molly couldn't take his patience anymore, she skipped from any kind of groping to leading his hand down her pants, and when he felt that already-wet holiest of holies meet his hand, his heart pounding, he felt like he knew it, like it was his somehow. He just knew what to do, as opposed to thinking about it. He glanced down about one time, and didn't really know why. He liked feeling her gyrate a little more than he liked watching it anyway. He kept wondering if she'd pull him in and kiss him, because she kept biting her lip and grinning and letting out teeny moans, like she was ashamed to, and clutching at him, with either the hand that lead him down her pants – that was still holding onto his forearm – or the hand on the back of one of his arms. She was part-next to him on a bench and part in-his-lap, which was how they had to sit for him to access her, and their faces were close.

"Am I doin' okay?"

"You're doin' better than okay, baby," she said. She looked like she was enjoying it, but for whatever reason, Odin wouldn't let himself believe she was. "Can't you tell?"

"I can, I'm just nervous."

She urged him into her, pulled him a little closer. "Don't be."

A minute of pure bliss and ecstasy.

A quiet smash, far off in the distance like if they were near it, it would be much louder. A lot of glass just broke somewhere near the front of the 'station. And then, a hurricane of gunfire – a lot of shooters, maybe with semi-automatic weapons, but it definitely wasn't one or a few shooters with automatic weapons. There was much too large a variety in the different pops and bangs of the guns' reports.

"Fuck," said Odin. He didn't move, but now he wasn't in the mood anymore.

Molly felt the same way, but, Odin noticed, didn't push his hand away or anything. "We should check that out, shouldn't we?"

A long silence. He seriously considered ignoring whatever made the initial explosion of noise, and what was still shooting a lot of different guns. The rate had died down considerably, but it was definitely still there.

"Yeah, we should." He looked from her clothed crotch to her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Don't _apologize_!" surprised that he would. "You were _perfect_." She held his face. "And you _are _perfect." She kissed him, a long smooch, with a soft "mmm" noise she punctuated with the "wa!" afterward.

"Seriously? You're not mad?"

"_Fuck _no!" She laughed.

"Good."

**1:41 ****am**** Saturday – 13 April 2007**

"A couple'a those gorilla things busted through the glass," said Karl. He and a lot of other uniformed police officers were there. Running to the scene with Molly, Odin felt like order was coming back to society, at least in the police station – maybe 50 of the civilians had gathered to see what was happening, and some of the cops were doing crowd control. The rest were zombie-poppin' like Karl.

"I'm disappointed," said Odin, his hands finding his pistols without asking him whether he wanted them to. The Eclipse Custom II and the USP45 Tactical, Odin had to admit to himself, felt pretty good like that, though.

"I was too," said Karl. "Wouldja mind covering for me? My mag's gonna run dry." Meaning his Colt M4A1, or maybe M4, magazine. Unlike Marion's earlier, the magazine loaded in his M4/A1 was the normal kind, which held 30 rounds.

"Sure thing," said Odin, stepping into Karl's place. The zombie flow stopped a few feet into the lobby, and all the police officers were gathered in a half-circle about 10 feet away from that point. Odin headshot plenty. Sometimes thinking about who they might've been hours ago, if not minutes or days, made him hesitate. One of them looked like the kind of high school girl who said she was much older than she was – 14 or 15, saying she's 17, 20. One of them looked like a dentist – that was the impression Odin got, although he was wearing what looked like clothes to sleep in – a very soft-looking blue t-shirt, very well-contrasting dark blue shorts, a robe. There was a nurse, a construction worker, some submissive-looking white-collar guy, and the rest of the town, or so it seemed. And no matter how many Odin shot, a second later, if not less than a second later, there would be another in that zombie's place. The moan was really the most overpowering thing. If all the zombies were completely silent, it would be okay, that their eyes were so unearthly, impossibly blank and cataract and white. It would be okay that none of them really had any emotion in their looks, pain or hunger or otherwise. It might even be okay that Odin could see how must of them had died – a bullet wound in the shoulder, blood loss from getting an arm lopped off. _But wait…doesn't it work through blood? If somebody died of blood loss, wouldn't it not be able to reanimate them? _Whatever that meant, even though the line of zombies to get into the station was endless, it was their collective moaning that bothered Odin. It felt like they were stepping inside of him, next to his heart, and trying to moan with whatever frequency they needed to to make his heart explode, and it felt like they weren't far from finding it.

About eight seconds later Karl tapped Odin on the shoulder. Odin stepped back and adored Molly for holding his arm lovingly when he was next to her again.

"Thanks," Karl said.

"Yeah," Odin said. "What's the plan here? Are we pushin' em out, or are we readying the next layer of defense or something?"

"The second one," Karl said. "We didn't seal off the doors behind us, but we should have. So that's what we're doing."

"How are you gonna be able to hold the zombies back and seal the doors off at the same time?"

"We're gonna give a couple guys a lotta ammo, and they're gonna hold them off. Then they go to the second floor with this fire escape ladder we just lowered."

"Good plan," Odin said.

"Thank you."

"Did you just make that up, or was it really a plan all along?"

Karl looked at Odin and grinned. "It was the plan all along."

"Sure it was."

"I'll see you later."

Odin walked off, leading Molly with a hand on her back. "We're gonna check on Marion," he said. "I don't care what we do after that."

"Wanna help with the barricading stuff?"

"I _will_," he said. "So yeah, I guess."

"I don't want to either. I guess we should, though."

"After that, wanna talk about what to do next?"

"Yeah. So far I like your Rourke idea, but that might be too big for us."

"I know. There might be people there already, too."

"We'll figure something out, baby."

"I know."

**1:46 ****am**** Saturday – 14 April 2007**

"Hey, cutie," said Marion. Odin very nearly flinched at hearing that, buckling the load-bearing harness he'd taken on as part of his new gear loadout.

"Never sneak up on a violent man with a P90 in his gun hand," said Odin, turning around. He'd kind of felt her coming up, but more importantly, when he heard her, he suddenly knew that she wasn't alone. Molly, next to Odin, still fighting with her vest to get it on herself, did flinch, but Odin felt like he was the only person who noticed that.

Marion laughed. Nervously, a few of the people with her did too. _At the risk of stereotyping_, thought Odin, _I think most'a those folks would declare themselves "emo."_ He wasn't wrong in thinking that – predominantly, very tight skinny jeans, very much layered, very much dark hair hanging in a lot of faces, skateboarding shoes and Converse All-Stars, tight shirts, some tight hoodies. Odin wasn't emo but he dressed like he was sometimes. His tan jeans, for example, while "slim fit," looked relatively emo, although they were too light to be purely that way, and the pink-purple Francis Ford Coppola shirt under his gear was pretty tight too.

"Hi, folks. My name's Odin," said he. He had a feeling he could close his eyes, spin a few circles, throw a punch and hit four My Chemical Romance fans.

There were nine of them. Five of – all but one a girl – said it back pleasantly, two some were genuinely kind of quiet, one tried to look too cool to respond and one said it back flatly. All but two of them introduced themselves, and Odin forgot all their names instantly.

He looked to Marion.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said, pleased he'd ask. The way one of the emo guys looked at her Odin got the idea she'd been flirting with him, but now, the way Marion was focused on Odin – walking closer to him – screamed, "I like nobody but this man." The emo guy did not like that, and looked at Odin as if to send him a message. Odin glanced at the emo guy to reply like "I don't have the patience for shit like that. Look at me again and I'll kill you." The emo guy submitted instantly, which disappointed Odin. Meanwhile: "I was kinda worried about you, though, hotness. Are _you _okay?"

"Yup," said Odin. "Molly is too."

An exchanged look. Molly knew Odin mentioned her to keep Marion aware of that. Marion looked at Molly like she'd get Odin to discard her eventually, definitely.

**1:52 ****am**** Saturday – 14 April 2007**

Helping O'Neill, among other cops, block off the doors that led from the lobby to the rest of the station:

"I know there were reports of the zombies 'n' stuff before it got like this, but had you read anything about the gorillas or the other stuff?"

O'Neill, hefting a card table with Odin, said, "Not that I remember. All I heard about were _dogs _acting funny."

"Huh." Odin helped turn the table on its side. Two other cops moved in to nail the thing down. "Hey, uh, I'm sorry I didn't get back in time to help the officers in the lobby. I wanted to."

"That's fine," O'Neill said. "You have a skillset better for other things, though." Read: You're not expendable. Odin grinned.

"I'm glad you thought of that."


	15. fifteen

It was so damn hard killing the other four lizard-gorilla things that killing the fifth, even though it'd clawed a pretty good gash on his waist, on the right, was pretty damn easy. It clawed, then pressed on. Odin let himself fall backward, not seeing any other way to go about it, then snapped a kick into its face. He got lucky, hitting it in the eyes, then suddenly, he had one of his knives in his left hand, and that left hand was about an inch away from the lizard thing's face. The knife itself was stuck in its head, and eye goo, along with blood, was leaking and spurting out of its destroyed eye, onto Odin's knife, hand, occasionally as far as his neck, and dripping downward onto his pelvis area.

Odin booted it off, jerking the knife out. Normally, he'd always clean the knife off before sheathing it, but there wasn't time now. He just rammed it home, then picked up his pistols, both with their slides locked back, magazines completely empty. His P90TR, dangling on his chest, was just as dry as his pistols.

_Fuck me_, he thought, wishing he could let go of his obsessive-compulsiveness a little more, pocketing the pistols' two empty magazines for later, and digging two new ones out.

There were a lot of reasons why he thought that, the main one being the growing, moaning, writhing horde of zombies around him. Even though his back was to a window and a staircase that would put a floor between him and the zombies – and whatever else might've been in that mob – he couldn't help but feel pretty goddamn enclosed, being in Biskind. It was an odd feeling, though, not the normal "enclosed feeling;" he kind of forgot where he was for a panic-inducing two seconds, then remembered absolutely everything.

Odin kind of just let the door into the stairway close itself, or not, if any zombies hobbled through it soon enough. _They'd coincidentally get through sooner or later anyway._

He slid home his first fresh magazine, its weight very, very reassuring as the eight 10mm bullets in it became part of his Eclipse Custom II. He felt really fortunate for having equipped himself for power more than capacity – neither of the DHS agents' pistols could've stood up against any of the lizard-gorilla things, even though both of their pistols had about twice the bullets in them Odin's Eclipse did. Neither_ of them stood up against the lizard things_, thought Odin, dropping the Eclipse's slide. It seemed way too loud in the stairway, noticed Odin, coming to the second flight. Perhaps 10 stairs, then a doorway, then about 200 yards separated him from safety, or at least relative safety. _Home_, Odin thought, smiling at the irony that he'd call a fucked-over-from-gunbattles-inside newspaper office "home."

Next was the USP45 Tactical. While he liked his Eclipse a lot more simply for power, he had to admit, the USP45T looked a little more original. While beautifully beastly, the Eclipse was basically just a clone of a much older, much more popular gun, the Pistol Automatic, Caliber .45, Model 1911A1, one so great that it still wasn't obsolete despite its age (about 96 years). The USP45T, however, looked so menacing, though he knew it to be part of a larger series, Odin half-believed that nothing else would ever resemble it. Oddly, Odin didn't even like the gun that much, but he still found himself describing it as a "raptor" pretty often.

And then he dropped the slide.

A few zombies were awaiting his exit of the stairway, but zombies moved so slowly, they might as well have not been. Odin just didn't go near them; they weren't so close-together he wouldn't even have to move any of them to get out of the place.

Odin dashed by three or four more before he got into the building's lobby, which had no zombies in it at all. Leaving was very easy, and reassuring because while he heard fires, and sirens, and screaming, and gunshots, nothing threatening was anywhere near him. Then he remembered to reload the P90.

Suddenly he was with the two DHS agents he'd left to wait for him in a parking lot again, jogging toward _Dalton Daily_. This felt familiar somehow.

"Uh, Odin–" Clyde J Frog began.

Odin's phone vibrated. "Hang on," he said, yanking it out its pocket. It took Odin long enough for the phone to vibrate two more times; he had to dart his hand between vest straps and the like, then find his hip pocket, then go through where some of the fabric had folded over itself, then find the phone. He was in such a rush he didn't even worry about whether he left any finger marks on the exterior LCD screen's surface.

It was Marion. Seeing her caller ID picture was really reassuring – like, knowing, I'm protecting that. That's why I'm letting all these dead people and fucking weird critter-things bleed on me and gash my fucking waist open – I love her, and everybody else I've shed blood for.

Before he could say anything, in order to answer: "They took Molly's phone. These people took over the building and – oh, fuck – I love you."

It took Odin a few seconds to process that. There was a lot of background noise, people struggling, plus the ambient noise around Odin, between his voice and Marion's. She was also speaking in a somewhat hushed tone. A somewhat hushed tone very much hurried out her mouth, by fear, adrenaline, and whatever else. Above any other detail, Odin noticed: Marion was terrified.

"Did either of you hear that?" Odin asked the agents. Seeing it in Clyde J Frog's arms, Odin was suddenly soothed, remembering that one of them had a DS Arms Inc. FAL SA58, a modernized Canadian clone of the older Belgian FNH FAL battle rifle which fired the same powerful rifle round – the 7.62x51mm NATO, or .308-inch Winchester, invented after working on a similar rifle round from World War II. It could kill a person in one shot, and, once again, it was a sight very reassuring.

"It was Marion, right? From…before you forgot everything?"

"Yeah," said Odin. "Why?"

"Uh…we were gonna tell you about that."

"About what?"

The other one, Leon Ward, pushed Frog out of focus: "When you were in Biskind those cars outside of the Dalton pulled up, and just started…taking over," she said. "We wouldn't've been able to do anything, so we thought once you got back – or…didn't – we'd kinda…do whatever we could."

"Yeah," said Leon. "We're really sorry, but there were a lot of them. We woulda just gotten swamped if we'd tried."

"It's fine," said Odin, "but…you know what we hafta do, right?"

They got their run on.

**10:28 ****pm**** Sunday – 15 April 2007**

Odin was particularly glad someone among the three of them had an assault rifle – or something larger – when it came time to make the first shot. Odin's P90 and Leon's 1Brügger + Thomet MP9 were no submachine guns – or, technically, personal-defense weapons – to be scoffed at, but they were simply not that powerful, whereas Frog's SA58 would stop cars. Even if Odin didn't already know that, Frog would've proved his point on their first target, a "crazy" hiding in a bush across the street from the _Dalton_'s façade. Odin's P90TR would definitely have killed the person from his location – about 50 yards away from him if he shot them in the right place – and Leon's MP9, with an effective range of maybe 100 meters (probably would have too, if he shot 'em enough), but Frog's SA58 guaranteed a killshot.

Odin still liked the rush that watching somebody's head pop like a balloon washed over him, but he wasn't surprised by it in the least.

Sprinting forward, Odin and Leon took cover on the same side of the street as the _Dalton _behind a car. Once they stopped, they'd watch the front door, and around themselves, as Frog moved so he'd be head-on with the door. Then Odin and Leon would go in.

It was a tense few seconds, or at least it was for Odin, until he got into place, but in that time, nothing happened. Some of Dalton's apocalyptic ambient noise kept at it, sure, but nothing happened with the crazies in _Dalton Daily_ holding Odin's only family hostage, or maybe just kind of holding them.

…Regardless, they had to die.

"Go!" shouted Odin, to Frog. Odin didn't watch him move, although he was tempted to, for whatever reason. Instead, he kept his head trained generally toward the _Dalton_. Nothing moved inside any of the _Dalton_'s four floors, but then again, the 4x32mm scope atop Frog's SA58 had made pretty sure of that. Nothing moved in the lobby, either, as far as Odin could see through the reflex sight on the front end of his P90.

"Ready!" Frog shouted, meaning he was in-position, still watching out for Odin and Leon with his assault rifle.

Odin and Leon moved up, stacking aside the door. The door was a problem – it was a revolving door, and Odin could never figure out how they worked.

He did this time, somehow, and soon found himself on the other side, feeling a little lost and alone for the instant it took Leon to meet up with him.

That reassurance lasted a second. At the end of that second, three or four of the crazies started shooting at Odin and Leon. One was definitely behind the security desk, the only thing on the otherwise-completely blank grey-pink granite floor of the _Dalton_, but Odin couldn't really tell where the other shooters were. Two were definitely on the left, but there were cubicles galore on that side, so where they were _exactly_ was anybody's guess. The fourth – and fifth? – were on the right, with at least one automatic weapon, so it was hard to tell how many people were there. Everybody but the last 1-2 shooters had semi-automatic weapons, or weapons they were luckily firing at that rate.

Odin didn't see any other option. At the security desk he could get pinned down easily, but if he were in that, he'd be able to take cover, whereas out on the lobby floor, he'd kind of just get shot. Not having time to tell Leon what he was doing, Odin ran straight at the guy behind the security desk. The guy fired two rounds in the instant it took Odin to react to everything, and as far as Odin could feel, neither of those two rounds hit him.

Every round in Odin's P90 burst hit the guy behind the security desk, as far as he could tell, as the man slumped backward, blood misting and spraying from his dozen-something new orifices.

The security desk was high, evidently designed not to be jumped over.

Odin jumped vaulted past the desk, turning in the air so that instead of shooting over and landing hard on his chest, or going just far enough to slam against the desk and cut the jump short, he rolled on his back and landed on his feet. He stumbled a little on the dead guy's body, but landed very well otherwise. The guy's gun was right on his other side, like it'd fallen straight out of his hand just before he fell, and hardly any blood was on it. There was one fine spray of it that looked like it'd hit the gun on the guy's way down, but it wouldn't muck it up. It was only on the grip. The gun was an FNH Barracuda, and if Odin would've made a list of guns he wouldn't expect anybody who'd just raided a building metaphorically full of his loved ones to have, an FNH Barracuda would've been pretty close to the top. It was a little snub-nosed gun with a 6-round cylinder, and it was FNH's only attempt at making a revolver, one that survived the mid-1970s and then, as far as history was concerned, disappeared. Odin couldn't help but feel maybe this was the last one in existence as he checked it. There were six cartridges in the gun's cylinder, all of them .357 Magnum, like the revolver he'd killed his first licker with, what felt like a few years ago in the police station. The main difference between this gun's 6-round cylinder and the other gun's was that this one was filled with fired cartridges.

"Leon?" shouted Odin. The gunfire'd stopped at some point. Odin didn't hear footsteps anywhere near him, and Leon wasn't close either. He probably wouldn't hear footsteps for the rest of the fight, though. To the left and right of the lobby was only carpeted office space, and all the crazies in the area were probably smart enough to remain undetected as long as they'd need to be to kill Odin or Leon. Past the lobby was only an elevator and a staircase. The carpeted office areas continued to the right and the left, though, like they might curve around behind the elevator/stairs area. Odin noticed the stairs didn't go downward, but he felt like he knew that already.

"I'm fine," Leon said. He was behind Odin and way to the right, close to where one or two shooters were. He sounded nervous, and completely adrenaline-fed, but fine, too. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Odin said, checking through his kill's pockets. It was a little messy, mostly because of how much blood was seemingly everywhere on the man. He was still bleeding, and blood spurted very often from about where the man's would've been. "Get anybody?"

"I might'a wounded one of 'em," Leon said. "No definite kills or anything."

"You know where any of 'em are?" Odin asked. Providence – he found speed-loaders, four of them. The man was dressed like any other john, with a typical-lumberjack long-sleeved, button-up, collared red plaid shirt; darkish, well-worn bluejeans, workboots. The ammo was in his left hip pocket, which made sense considering he was a right-handed shooter. The ammo was also .357 Magnum, Odin noticed, slipping three speed-loaders into an empty Eclipse-magazine pouch. He loaded the gun with the last one, then tossed it aside. He wasn't going to keep the Barracuda. In fact, he kind of wanted to ditch it as soon as he blazed off the next six rounds.

"No," said Leon.

"One of them was about 10 feet infront'a you," said Odin. Neither he nor Leon cared hide from the crazies. If three or four of them had been shooting at them as they ran to cover, three or four of them knew where they'd gone. They definitely knew where Odin'd gone; he wouldn't be able to move without detection, unless he got lucky

Odin didn't really know how or why, but he was a fast revolver-user. Somehow, he knew: There were basically two kinds of people who used revolvers. Some were slow, and they were the kind who would rather use semi-automatics. Semi-automatics never really had the kind of power a revolver had, but they'd carry as many as 20 rounds, or more, too. The other kind of revolver user was fast, a pro, and they'd be able to discharge 12 rounds in about three seconds. They'd fire six like nothing, then reload. They'd reload fast, too – if done properly, a revolver could easily be loaded as fast as any semi-automatic. Then they'd fire six more. Odin was fast. He had those six fresh bullets in the gun, then had the cylinder snapped back into the gun's body, faster than he knew it.

"Yeah. The other two were on the other side. One was maybe 40 feet back, by a bunch'a file cabinets. The other was closer somewhere by some desks."

"Thanks. I wasn't sure about the first one," said Odin.

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna go quiet for a little while," said Odin, planning. "Holler if you need to, okay?"

"Sure thing," Leon said, sounding like he was moving. If he was, it was quietly.

Odin shifted, getting his P90TR in his left hand, like before. He kept the Barracuda in his right. He'd use the P90, primarily. If it ran dry, he'd drop the Barracuda and reload. If the 'cuda ran dry, and it was convenient to, he'd reload it. Or maybe not, it hardly mattered; Odin could definitely inflict pain upon the crazies holding his loved ones captive, probably even kill them, but he didn't care about it. It might be unfair. _Maybe it's unfair to have the only people you love get taken captive, too. Fuck yourself, crazies._

Odin risked a look around. The two crazies he was worried about, on the left, weren't up anywhere, but he saw a plant on somebody's desk about 30 feet away shifting like a shoulder brushed past it, so one of them was probably around there. Odin saw no sign of another shooter. On his right, he saw at least one crazy, maybe 15 feet away. He could let Leon, wherever he was, handle that, or he could blow his cover and save Leon the trouble.

Odin quick-aimed, using mostly his muscle memory, not really even considering where the gun was. In about a second he felt the Barracuda's trigger break, and suddenly, one considerable .357 Magnum round's recoil later, that crazy's right – nearest – shoulder erupted blood. Odin had missed, but he'd still made the crazy spin and stumble. With a .357 Magnum round, a "miss" like that could still mean the person would fall over and die. _I _s_hould'a noticed my hand shaking._

Odin had taken more of a risk than he meant to. Now that he'd committed that much, he wanted to shoot the crazy at least one more time, someplace where it'd hurt a lot.

Odin turned the single trigger-tap into a double-tap, but it felt like four or five minutes passed between his trigger-pulls.

The second round made the crazy's left eye disappear. A lot of his head did, too, but Odin only noticed when the man's look – one of full-on gladiatorial bloodlust – splashed blood, and halved, shifting to a kind of bleak shock for whatever amount of time he was still alive…until his brain 1piñataed out the back of his head.

He started screaming. Maybe that was from the first round; it only lasted an instant.

Odin ducked and crouch-ran to the left side of the lobby. There was a little entrance to the office area with a tiny skeleton-gate thing in front of it, but there was some kind of bank-teller-style window setup past the stairway alcove, making the place kind of a room of its own. Odin got close to the barrier wall between the carpeted office and the lobby, then, hugging it, ran to the bank place. He had to make two 90 degree turns, and the run took probably 18 minutes. Maybe that was the adrenaline speaking.

"Thanks, Odin!" shouted Leon. It might've meant simply that, but the tone of Leon's voice told Odin, There aren't any more shooters on the right side. I'm on my way to help you.

Odin couldn't respond. Instead, he listened for about four seconds.

Nobody near him, or nobody moving.

He looked. Same thing. He was going to hop over the counter between him and the office's bank area. Maybe things would look different on the other side, maybe there'd be a shooter waiting for him someplace invisible to him now. Maybe there wouldn't be. Odin just hoped that five .357 Magnum rounds and maybe…38 5.57x28mm rounds round take care of anybody who got in his way on the other side.

"This side's safe," shouted Leon, on the move. "I'm coming to you. Close to the door." That was almost on the opposite side of the lobby from Odin.

Odin backed up for speed, then hopped through, immediately checking left, where any threat would probably be, then right. Nobody.

He advanced along the plain white wall, coming up on a right turn. There were plenty of hiding spaces he'd see before that corner, though, so he made sure to be careful. Looking up, Odin could see into the _Dalton_'s second floor, too, so he kept his head on a pretty big swivel. Still nothing. The emptiness Odin experienced on the other side made him nervous. After a few seconds, Odin was shaky in anticipation.

He saw Frog coming in through the swivel door.

"Odin?" called Frog.

"I'm not sure where he is," said Leon, moving up. Odin could see him, and he could see Odin. For a second, they snap-pointed their guns at each other. Odin really liked that Frog didn't expose him. "There's nobody on the right side. Come help out."

"Sure thing."

Frog moved toward Leon's voice.

Odin moved left very slightly at the corner, then very slightly more left, cutting the pie – securing as much ground as possible while keeping himself as covered as possible. The blunt version of that was to suddenly turn 90 degrees and completely expose oneself, but Odin's enemy-sense wouldn't quiet. There were definitely at least two shooters on this side, and they might know where Odin was already.

As he advanced, he realized that at least one of the shooters completely didn't know where he was. In a close-to-dressy outfit – dark pants, a green button-up-v-necked shirt – this shooter was standing slowly, like he knew where either Frog or Leon was. He was aiming carefully with what looked like a little riot shotgun. The guy was maybe 15 feet in front of Leon.

Not for long, though. Odin didn't want to blaze away with his P90 if he didn't have to; since stocking up at the police station, Odin hadn't seen anybody else using a 5.57x28mm weapon (which made since considering there were only two of them), but he'd seen plenty of dead people with .357 Magnum weapons on them, most of those revolvers, and just as much ammo scattered about in unreasonable easy-to-see locations. If Odin was going to shoot at this guy, it was going to be with the more expendable weapon. From his position, Frog would probably have a shot on him within a second or two anyway, so it would be okay even if Odin missed.

It might not have been smart to do it one-handed, but Odin double-tapped the gradually-rising shotgunner in the sternum. If the immediate roses of blood that opened up on the guy's chest were correct, Odin's bullets hit within two or three centimeters of one another. The guy fell backward, spun by Odin's bullets, blood splash-painting the desk/cubicles he'd been using as cover. .357 Magnum rounds had the kind of power to knock somebody down; spinning them was simple. With a shout, the man hit floor with a muffled thud, and so did his gun. Odin lost sight of him, but not his wake of life-essence.

"Sorry I didn't announce myself," said Odin. If there had been, indeed, two living shooters on this side, the second knew where he was.

"No problem," Frog said. "That guy prob'ly would'a shot me five seconds from now."

"Then you're welcome," said Odin, cutting more of the pie his corner presented him.

With a cold goodbye from with a cold goodbye from a shotgun he didn't see coming, the

last gunman went down, hard.

**10:34 ****pm**** Sunday – 15 April 2007**

"I know we should clear this floor, but fuck that, they're not on this one. Whether you folks come is entirely up to you, but I'd welcome the help," said Odin, finishing the thought although both Frog and Leon kept trying to cut him off.

Of course, now the DHS agents looked a little different. Frog's SA58 was across his back in exchange for one of the crazies' guns, an M16 clone, a Knights Armament Company SR-47. It looked wrong somehow. Leon's gun had changed too, from his MP9 – now in a goofily-oversized-looking holster/pouch on his right leg – to a Remington M799, an old bolt-action hunting rifle he looked familiar with.

Obsessively-compulsively checking his new shotgun, a Mossberg 500 Shorty to make sure it was fully-loaded…again – Odin heard Frog say, "We're with you. We owe you a lot more than assistance in room clearing."

Odin's 500 Shorty was full, with five rounds. He didn't really like having any less than eight rounds in the tube with any shotgun he held, considering that once those eight were gone, he'd have to slip eight more shells in, but maybe the tradeoff was okay here. The 500 Shorty was the kind that seemed to have two barrels that didn't – it had a barrel on the top, with sights and everything, but on the bottom was a second tube the same length as the one on top. The difference between the top and bottom tubes was that the bottom one was an integral magazine that couldn't be removed. Instead, the gun's firer would have to slip individual rounds into to load the gun, which was Odin's main objection to that kind of shotgun. Odin's Shorty was tiny, and it was okay to have a small capacity considering that – the _Dalton_ had its fair share of equally tiny corners and hallways…and Odin _knew_ that, by means he kind of hoped he would never know.

"Thanks, Special Agent Frog!" said Odin, with a grin.

Frog smiled.

"How'd you get so good at killin' people, anyway?" asked Leon, half-kidding, but half-really-wanting-to-know-dammit.

"I'm not sure," Odin replied. "Uh…I don't remember."

Said Frog, "That's not funny."

"Yes it is," said Odin, "but I really don't know how to explain what happened to me." He smiled. "I don't _remember_ what happened to me."

Leon laughed, chewing on a fingernail and looking around absent-mindedly.

Something _hit_ Odin, metaphorically:

"Why haven't they responded to the gunshots?"

**10:56 ****pm**** Sunday – 15 April 2007**

The second floor, and third, were completely blank. Messy, sure. People had obviously shuffled about in the second recently – but only in the stairwell's vicinity – and Odin's instincts said Molly, if not the rest of the group, had been on the third when Marion called him. There were numerous signs of struggle on 3F, and as Leon pointed out, "A zombie outbreak happened around here a couple days ago; the cleaning crew's probably not been around," but Odin believed some of those signs were those of his crew, from within the last hour – "and I'm not just being hopeful."

The fourth floor felt like a level straight out of Half-life: Counterstrike – a cubicle-rich "Officeroomanyplace, USA" few rooms, lit not-quite-well-enough with buzzing overhead fluorescents that seemed a few hours from burning out, just bright enough to be worked under but not for people to flourish under. It seemed too fitting to Odin – the parallel between people who would've toiled away at computers and worksheets and TPS reports under those lights, mindlessly as the zombies would eat somebody, or whatever other animal they stumbled upon.

Odin, Frog and Leon had about 20 seconds, and a few very measured, very deliberate quiet footsteps before White-collar Office erupted in hellfire, the staccato clatter of about 15 or more guns, a few of them on automatic, some big-bore, some small-caliber. Enough metal went flying at Odin's fireteam to build a Buick and have enough left over to make a few small red wagons, and remarkably, not a one of Odin's fireteam members got hit…except for Leon, who kind of just exploded. Odin watched, ducking behind a corner in the tiny entrance hallway, and saw what was once Leon become some sick, 5'11" tower of blood, organs and bone, plus pale whitish brain chunks, clothes and hair. Leon probably never felt it.

Odin and Frog split up by nature not so much as by choice, Odin dashing to the left. Frog was closer to the left (and went to the right), but whatever part of Odin pulled him that way probably knew that. He – driven by that same unconscious force – pointed the Shorty at one of the three crazies waiting that way like a pistol, at the same time drawing his Barracuda from a pocket. The shotgun went off and kicked Odin's arm back. He realized that was, indeed, _his_ arm, just in time to not drop the damn thing. Meanwhile he connected Barracuda front sight with crazy face – it replaced the middle-aged-janitor-looking-guy's nose – and pulled Barracuda trigger. Just like it went with Leon, where Odin saw flash and life and spirit and eyes before, he suddenly saw life-fluid and emptiness, one last flourish before absolute nothingness, an explosive goodbye.

The goodbye got a good deal of blood on the guy's partner – just next to him, but across a small desk-aisle – but that hardly mattered. Odin turned the Barracuda to the side to shoot another target – not another human being – as fast as he could. He fired twice more. He had no idea why he'd fire the gun sideways, it felt funny, it felt funny, and it felt wrong, but it might have saved him from death at the hands of a crazy who probably would've raped and tortured Odin for the fun of it for a few hours, before even considering ending Odin's suffering…not to mention what he'd do to Molly –

_Fuck the Barracuda_, thought Odin, dropping it and pumping the Shorty's fore-end with his free hand. He felt the action work a new shell into the chamber, and felt the old shell kick out the shotgun's right side. He could swear it was a part of him coming out of the gun, but maybe that was because he was firing it left-handed – the gun's ejection port was on the right side – and he had to be careful in cocking it so the burning-hot shell wouldn't hit him in the face.

Odin couldn't hear the shell bounce, though. Off to his right Frog was fighting a way, against 15-some heavily-armed crazies. Odin had a war of his own, though, sending plenty of death in the form of hotter-than-hot little bullets his way. They chipped at office building wall, threw paper into the stale air and created the illusion that there was wind in the place, blotted out lights the way they could blot out hope and happiness and love

two were running at Frog, from Odin's side like he wouldn't notice them. Partially Odin's side, anyway. One of them had a tiny knife – no, it was some utility tool, with its little serrated knifeblade locked out – in his hand, cocked high back like to stab Frog – and one had nothing to speak of as far as weapons went but he had some really fucking dirt-encrusted fingernails. Or maybe it was dry blood, looked like it –

Odin's Shorty tore the unarmed one's upper torso apart, like some of his neck and shoulders was never really there. The crazy's face turned into a hellish joke of a dartboard where darts were little explosive ball bearings – that's what it looked like – with bones, exposed and sticking out and blood pouring and spurting out like it had finally realized it didn't have to stay cramped inside this asshole's body for its entire lifetime, everything under his face until his belly nothing but red. Odin figured, if Frog was going to get hurt – and he _wasn't_ – Odin damn well wasn't going to let Frog get HIV or something.

The guy with the knife froze and looked to Odin. There were probably 10 guns behind the guy which could've stopped Odin from doing anything to the guy, but the crazy guy _looked_ at Odin. The guy – no, man – looked like he managed or owned a bait & tackle shop. He was probably 48 or 50, but a young 48 – he could've been 30, but his eyes seemed to experienced and wise for 30. He had a wedding ring on and A HAT The hat gave him away. It was a tiny, on-my-own-computer iron-on picture with crappy resolution, flaking away like Odin felt his soul was with every additional human or even ex-human or with the lizards ex-whatever he killed. It was the man with a kid maybe 4 years old, and the kid had the man's eyes. He probably had his mother's hair – it was blonde, shortish but very blonde, but the bait & tackle man's hair was pure-black

BLOOD**RED**

Which turned into pure-something else entirely and "entirely" red when one of the 10-odd guns behind the man finally fired.

Odin rolled, sliding a little and stopping behind a desk. He cycled the shotgun's fore-end again, and now, the gunfire was quiet enough for Odin to hear the hollow shell hit carpet.

That was the only sound in the whole world  
until the bait & tackle man's body hit the f**RED**loor, a slump to his knees, a flump forward onto his chest.

"Frog? You okay?" Odin called. Not planning to keep it for long, Odin only had the three shells in the shotgun, then he'd ditch it for the P90 dangling enticingly against his back. His Shorty would certainly blast through the cubicle pin-stupid-pictures-on-it walls most of the crazies were behind, but the 5.7x28mm rounds in his P90 were designed to do two things, one of them being "go through shit." Although small, the P90 rounds were lethal at about 200 meters; they could go through half an inch of cubicle components.

"Very," Frog said, with the kind of tone someone could speak in after having survived an onslaught of perhaps 300 bullets. "You?"

"Fine."

"These people talking, or…what?" asked Frog.

Odin tested the waters, mostly by doing nothing. "Uh…"

"Nothin?" asked Frog.

"Hard office," said Odin, with kind of a shrugging, surrendering tone. Frog got it and laughed. When comedians' jokes were bombing – pre_-zombie invasion_, thought Odin – they'd often say "hard audience." Someone behind the crazies' boundary got it, to. She was at least one real wall away, but it would take a lot more than one wall to hide Naya's dangerously-close-to-shrill laughter from Odin.

"Shut the fuck up!" From a voice that hardly sounded like it could speak English. _Oh well_, it seemed to say, _blind rage/hatred's a universal language._

A dangerously-close-to-shrill shriek of pain.

"Don't worry, babies," said Odin, in a flawless Christopher Walken impression, "I'll be there soon enough." He was a little high on adrenaline his system was squirting through him, but he also thought if he came off as _that_ laid-back about everything, it might hurt the crazies' morale. If they were sane enough to have a "morale" anymore. It wasn't until that moment that he realized Naya was truly in love with him, and that he was truly in love with her.

He found himself wondering how to break it off with Molly when

Another shriek

"Leave her alone!" a second hardly-even-English speaker said, from the same room as the first, this man's a much more authoritative tone. The first sounded like a grunt.

"Fine!" from the first voice. Yeah, grunt, definitely. A reprimanded bully who would say "okay" to do it again, later, and not get caught.

"You ever play _Rainbow Six 3_?" asked Frog.

"What?" asked Odin. But then he KNEW a few people were behind him, coming toward him. "Hang on."

"Gotcha."

Odin pulled his Kimber Eclipse Custom II out, and put the Shorty in his right hand. There'd be at least two.

There were four, two more than he'd really expected. Odin got two and injured one with the Shorty – with one blast – but he wouldn't have time to pump it and fire again. Odin hoped the best for his Eclipse, firing once – change target – twice – change back – thrice – change back – before thinking. The gun's 10mm rounds definitely did their job, but the guy injured by Odin's initial Shorty blast wasn't about to be silenced, and he had a shotgun. Odin hoped it was pump-action like his, and that the guy would miss, too.

Odin ditched the Shorty to help get himself back behind his desk faster.

The injured guy fired and a chunk of Odin's desk tore off, blasting dust into his eyes, like something very large had bitten it.

Odin scratched plaster and general painful dust stuff out his eyes – Chuk –

The man's shotgun was pump-action, and that was the pump to prepare the next shell, and kick out the old one. The next chuk meant the guy would be able to fire again. Odin threw himself backward. The guy was just standing there, his only threat Odin, evidently. Gunfire where Frog was.

Odin took the injured guy + shotgun down with two bullets, both hitting about where the guy's heart probably was, their entry wounds so close they would probably look like one. Odin pictured coroners arguing over that

until he saw two crazies running at him over his desk. On his back, he couldn't really do shit about it.

He'd fired five rounds from his Eclipse, so he had at least three more. His USP45 Tactical was under him, completely pinned, and the shotgun, uncocked, would take too long to get. He'd probably just have to beat the hell out of them.

Odin didn't really think, instead firing the gun in a flurry – a trio – of little, very loud explosions. One of the crazies fell backwards, with his left leg gone under the knee, and a big red hole where his neck met his head. The other guy Odin hit in the belly, but probably too far to either side; the guy stumbled forward, as Odin wanted him _not_ to, shouting in agony.

Odin got lucky there, though. The guy fell into a place so perfect, for Odin's sake, that made his throat look like a target the size of a skyscraper, and Odin seized that opportunity without hesitation. A straight, strong jerk of a kick. Odin heard something break on impact, but more importantly, he felt something kind of give, then squish inward.

Odin's Eclipse was empty, but the Shorty wasn't. He snatched that up, listening to the guy gag on his own blood, and the gunfire on Frog's side quiet down. Then Odin performed a coup de grace on the guy at his feet, asphyxiating. It was a loud one, and it disintegrated the guy's head cleanly, except for the lake of blood at the end of his neck where his head should've been, and behind him on the resiny-looking white wall there.

Odin ditched the clunky-looking shotgun and reloaded his Eclipse. The recent firing left one full magazine for it. He had spare rounds…back at the mansion, that he'd have to handload into magazines anyway. He swapped magazines, pocketing the old one, then holstered the Eclipse. Odin pulled his P90 into readiness, deactivating its safety in about 1/3 of a second.

"So, Odin, ever played _Rainbow Six 3_?" asked Frog.

"I'm glad to hear you're okay too," said Odin. He didn't want to answer but for time – "Yes. Get to the point."

"When you're giving your team orders on a door, you know what 'down' did?"

Odin wanted to say, _Of course I do, it's Breach, Bang and Clear_. "Man, that is some obscure shit. That game's from like 2003." Readying himself to surge forward.

"But you get it?"

"Yeah." Frog had a flashbang grenade he was about to use. Flashbangs, also known as stun grenades, make a very loud, deafening bang and a very bright, blinding flash when they go off. Some can affect people for a long time, some a little. Odin recalled more game trivia and said: "You want me to wait for the Zulu go-code?"

With a laugh, Frog replied, "No."

Odin heard him pulling a safety pin out of a grenade quietly. He focused on not hearing anything.

A few seconds and one very loud bang later, Odin let his ears go and stormed forward. Maybe it was a good thing that all the gunfire in the relatively small room, echoing like crazy, had already deafened his unprotected ears pretty good, especially the very loud, very fast 10mm bullets' pops and the short-barreled shotgun blast stuff. He came across six very confused, blind- and deaf-looking crazypersons on his way to the office at the end of the hall, where Naya and likely some other people were. Odin killed all six of them with quick, three-to-five-round bursts, not even pausing to admire his handiwork, or see if it was, indeed, handiwork. In gunning down six harmless people, he felt nothing.  
By the noise Odin heard, Frog did something very similar on his way forward.

There were three crazies in the room, one of whom seemingly conscious enough to notice it when he got dead. He still maintained a certain quiet dignity, though.

"Good placement," Odin said, referring to Frog's flashbang but not that clearly, because he was untying a few people bound in hand-tied rope…then he realized that his entire crew was in the room. Those not back at the mansion, anyway. He hadn't paid attention to his surroundings, really, past threat-assessment; he was just doing a job. _His_ job?

The people he knew best were there, together like they'd not let the crazies split them up – Naya, who looked like she'd been choked with bruises on her neck, Molly, with her shirt torn around her belly like she'd gotten slashed…it was bloody, Marion, with a black eye – because she'd called him? – Moe, Sakai and Eva. A few of the French kids were there too, although one of them had what was probably a bullet wound – a wound he would probably bleed to death because of – as were the other two living DHS agents. A few people from The Gang who should've been there were not, however.

Odin was careful to check on Molly first, and to definitely _not_ look at Naya while he did as if to say "I'd do you first, but…"

Naya was tied down more tightly than anybody, and giving her special attention came pretty naturally to Odin. Once she was out, after already having thanked him belligerently, she latched onto him, hard.

For a while.

**11:24 ****pm**** Sunday – 15 April 2007**

"I'm really sorry I kissed him like that," said Naya to Molly, "but…I just freaked out. And he saved me, y'know?"

Molly dumped all her weight onto Odin, her arms around him, like she was kicking dirt out behind her at Naya's face. Naya was still close to Odin – so close that Molly might've had to push past her to get to Odin. As Molly moved, she said, "It's okay, just keep in mind he's _mine_." Tapping his chest, his lips, dragging a finger along them, gently leading his face up a little and finally giving him a long, soft kiss. Odin looked into Naya's eyes during it.

--

The author refused to comment on the novel's odd chronological structuring beginning here, except to say that it wasn't an accident.

Note: evidence of what happened between approximately 6 am and 10:25 pm Sunday, 15 April 2007 does not exist. –**Ed**.


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